Marc's Public Blog

This is the 2nd time I hear Armin van Buuren doing those intro tight mixes at the start and they are absolute gold, please don't stop. And yes, doing that synced with the fireworks only made it that much better :)

And props for playing Toccata et Fugue en Ré Mineur (D minor) from Johan Sebastian Bach for all the kids who have no idea who Bach, is 🙂 (and people who know both Armin and Bach well will know that Armin played that same melody during Yearmix video in a carton intro with students learning music in a class, starting with Bach and adding beats and morphing into trance).
Things like this are why I will always have to admire Armin forever, even if at times he hurts my ears by playing hard techno right after saying on the mike "who's with me in a state of trance?" 😄

Update, for people asking "which yearmix did he play Bach, in?", I just went to look it up for you. That was 2019: It's a really cool music class cartoon made just for that yearmix, and sure enough it mentions Mozart, Beethoven and Bach

Yes, that was 5.5 years ago, but I have a good memory when music is involved :)

I figured I would give rPi5s a try, especially as they now natively supported PCIe cards including M2 NVME storage, and with the right adapter card, PCIe SATA (bypassing USB). Most importantly, they now have some reasonably capable flashable firmware that allows booting from NVME (or SATA), bypassing the sdcard entirely, which we all know is not a great proposition for a reliable server since sdcards are very much known to die, even if you buy the more fancy ones.
My other requirements were to be able to:

Serial and Sysrq

I quickly found out that rPi5 would more or less do all of these, except the boot time serial support. The boot firmware does support outputting to the built in debug serial port on the board, ttyAMA10, if you forgive the somewhat unoptanium 2 pin plug they felt compelled to use and that was honestly hard to procure until I found USB serial adapters that included that wretched 2 pin plug. Note that I'm pretty annoyed about it, because I have lots of similar looking 2 pin plugs from my RC planes and ardupilot hardware, and they are literally off by a portion of 1mm. The lack of standardization and pointless spread of incompatible connectors is utterly ridiculous. 114*|this adapter works, offers ttyUSB0 and the right Rpi5 compatible plug 112*|this other adapter kind of works, but offers ttyACM0 instead which is not compatible with break/sysrq

In summary: /dev/ttyACM USB adapters do not support sending BREAK (ALT+F in minicom) and therefore not suitable since you will not be able to send sysrq commands for reboot. Make sure you adapter provides /dev/ttyUSB0 and that BREAK works.

So, once you have serial working, you make sure sysrq works and you're set, correct? Well, not really:

rPi5 Early Boot Configuration

aragorn:~# tail -10 /boot/config.txt 
#sdram_freq_min=400
arm_64bit=1
dtoverlay=disable-wifi

dtparam=watchdog=on

# This is suggested by PCI expander, but seems useless
#dtparam=picex1
#dtparam=picex1_gen=3

aragorn:~# cat /boot/cmdline.txt 
root=/dev/md0 rootflags=subvol=root rootwait net.ifnames=0 logo.nologo console=tty1 console=ttyAMA10,115200 panic=15 rd.shell

The early boot is configured like this

aragorn:~# rpi-eeprom-config 
[all]
CONSOLE=UART
BOOT_UART=1

# tries other non bootable before nvme to bring menu on HDMI
# read right to left, 4: USB, 6: NVME, 1: sdcard, f: restatt
#BOOT_ORDER=0xf164
# boot nvme first and if not, sdcard
BOOT_ORDER=0xf16
# Sometimes needed by NVME drives to show up in time for boot
PCIE_PROBE=1

[gpio17=1]
# this would boot sdcard directly:
#BOOT_ORDER=0xf1
# boot other absent devices first force menu before choosing sdcard
# read right to left, 4: USB, 1: sdcard, 6: NVME, f: restatt
BOOT_ORDER=0xf614
aragorn:~# 

Boot Configuration

aragorn:~# cat /etc/fstab 
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs size=8095M,noatime,lazytime,nodev,nosuid,mode=1777 

LABEL=btrfs_boot / btrfs nofail,subvol=root 0 0 
LABEL=btrfs_pool1 /var/local/space  btrfs defaults,subvol=pool1 0 0 
LABEL=btrfs_pool2 /var/local/space2 btrfs defaults,subvol=pool2 0 0 

LABEL=btrfs_boot  /mnt/btrfs_boot  btrfs noatime,lazytime,rw 
LABEL=btrfs_pool1 /mnt/btrfs_pool1 btrfs noatime,lazytime,rw,noauto,x-systemd.automount 
LABEL=btrfs_pool2 /mnt/btrfs_pool2 btrfs noatime,lazytime,rw,noauto,x-systemd.automount 
UUID=84958e33-a82c-4864-83b9-f483529a3bed /mnt/sdcard ext4 noatime,lazytime,rw,noauto,x-systemd.automount 

UUID=7E8C-86F8 /boot/firmware vfat noatime,lazytime,rw 0 2 
UUID=F6DA-B64E /mnt/sdcard_boot vfat noatime,lazytime,rw,noauto,x-systemd.automount 
UUID=7E8C-86F8 /mnt/firmware1 vfat noatime,lazytime,rw,noauto,x-systemd.automount 
UUID=4122-81AA /mnt/firmware2 vfat noatime,lazytime,rw,noauto,x-systemd.automount 
aragorn:~# cat /proc/partitions 
major minor  #blocks  name 
 259        0  500107608 nvme0n1 
 259        1     131072 nvme0n1p1 
 259        2   31034880 nvme0n1p2 
 259        3  468940120 nvme0n1p3 
 259        4  488386584 nvme1n1 
 259        5     131072 nvme1n1p1 
 259        6   31034880 nvme1n1p2 
 259        7  457219096 nvme1n1p3 
 179        0   31166976 mmcblk0 
 179        1     131072 mmcblk0p1 
 179        2   31034880 mmcblk0p2 
   8        0   58615704 sda 
   9        0   31017472 md0 
aragorn:~# cat /proc/mdstat 
Personalities : [raid1] 
md0 : active raid1 nvme0n1p2[0] nvme1n1p2[1]
      31017472 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

Btrfs, Initramfs, Dracut

aragorn:~# cat /var/local/scr/rpi-dracut 
#!/bin/bash

#dracut --install "bash find ls" --regenerate-all -p --force
dracut --install "bash find ls grep more vi vim vim.nox" --regenerate-all -p --force --no-hostonly
cat <<EOF

Add rd.break=premount to force a debug shell (which must be done via rpi-boot-rescue 
and the rescue partition).

man dracut.kernel and dracut for more details

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
You must copy generated initrd to /boot/firmware and check path in /boot/config.txt
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
EOF

some nice decors, but I remember last year being a bit better

All that said, Blurr played an absolutely fantastic trance set that was absolutely lovely:

Then came time time for Gareth, without lasers or microphone :)

Great to see the local TFSF crew, thanks to all those who came.

A couple of days later, we went back for a couple of very nice shallow dives around caves and cool relief:

found a few fish :)

Two notes for myself: unfortunately not many fish at those sites, and the water was much colder than I remembered (17C). I definitely needed a bunch of layers not to be cold.

With less than a day to pack/unpack after EDC Vegas, and fix my new LED outfit which has plusses, but it's unfortunately more fragile and needs more maintenance, I barely made it to a plane to Frankfurt and then Malta to arrive half way through Day 0 of Euphoria Malta's 6 days of Trance! I can't say I was super awake, or that I stayed until the end that first night, but I was glad I at least made it this year :)

How is Euphoria different? It's actually a small festival in size, and purposely so. It's meant to be affordable, and to focus on trance music and fun. There is no VIP, no backstage, and DJs, when not on the decks, are part of the crowd and the party. What else can you ask for? This is the lumi from 10 years ago, before it got too big, and that I never got to attend before it was too late and become what is is now. While I don't have a time machine, and I did ask Craig Conelly :) to go back and experience these nice and small lumis, I don't need one anymore, because Euphoria is where it's at, except with much more lovely people running it.
Now, the DJs are DJs that don't play the big stages every day, they probably don't get paid loads, which in turn allows keeping the event affordable without big crowds, which honestly made for a great experience. I've even got to meet some I had listened to for years, but never seen in person, that was just plain awesome.
And because it was basically a big family party, there is no ridiculous bar fight bouncer security like the place you know, although if you wanted to get your genitals groped at the entrance, I'm so sorry, but Euphoria will not be the place for you :) All the clubs were super nice, and the security folks there to make sure everything went well, not to harass customers. Best case scenario.

So, like I mentioned last year after going to Rong and then Captured Malta, I took a chance a wrote a comparison of all 3 festivals, even if I hadn't been able to go to Euphoria. You can go here for that malta trance festival comparison and I am happy to see that my review of Euphoria was actually pretty on point before even having had the chance to go. You can go visit the page, but the relevant bit, I'll paste here:
"Euphoria Festival Malta is indeed the cheapest and most grass roots of the 3, if it weren't just a few days after EDC and I could have attended, I'm pretty sure it's similar to Anomaly Summer of Trance in feel, just without the 4 stages from ASOL: smaller festival feel, more chance to chat with and meet the DJs, and so forth. The DJs will be less mainstage big festival DJs, but that's also a good thing in many ways, and I really mean this: I've attended lots of big festivals with the big name DJs, I do absolutely enjoy them, but it's really a nice and a breath of fresh air to enjoy smaller festivals that simply have more of a family and friends feel and where you're going to get real trance (more techno and hardstyle in the bigger trance festivals this year). I hope I didn't screw this description since indeed I wanted to attend, but just couldn't"
The one thing I missed is how many hours of lovely trance Euphoria actually had. 68!!! That is a winner right then, and as I properly guessed, no techno or hardstyle being pushed everywhere, sooo nice.

Day #0 Preparty, Zion Bar

this is why we come :)

PLUR, the European way :)

Day #1, Beachaven

Day 1 Video Summary:

Eventually, sun came down and we partied outside a bit longer before having to go indoors:

Day #2, Beachaven

We got an absolutely lovely 5H thrillseeker set

we got to chat afterwards

Then more partying indoors:

Thillseekers (partial set):

Day 2 Video Summary:

Day #3, Gianpula Phoenix Club

they were already getting ready for Captured in Sept (will be back for that)

surprise Lost Emotions b2b Xijaro and Pitch

and Marcella Woods was awesome, first time I got to see her

Day 3 Video Summary:

Marcella Woods (full set):

Day #4, Liquid Club Malta

haha, I love this shirt :)

Day 4 Video Summary:

Day #5, Gianpula Rooftop

Sunset was beautiful from up there:

And a bit after midnight was it for Day 5 (really day 6). That was a lot! I think I managed to do 60 hours of trance out of 68h available over 6 days. Wee! Anyone who has not done this probably cannot comprehend how many 6 days is and how exhausting it is (in a good way, haha). Definitely worth experiencing.

Day 5 Video Summary:

The People

As I mentioned earlier, one great thing at Euphoria is that you can meet the DJs and chat with them every day:

Steve!

Andrea!

David Forbes was surprised to see me again after 5 days :)

First time meeting Ronski Speed!

Marcella Woods, so great to see her perform

Mark Sherry

Darren Tate

Should you go? Would I go Back?

Other things I didn't note earlier: the organizers did a great job sending beforehand info on each venue, opening times, when food would be available, etc.... In and outs were also allowed without issues. Last but not least, unlike let's say rong, there was no nonesense of requiring attendees to use some fake wristband money, which is always a huge plus, for me :)

And lumi, well, if you've read past reports, you already know how I unfortunately have to feel about it (if not, you can find that in the previous posts). While I'm glad I got there in 2019, even though by then it was already feeling a bit too big, I feel like it lost its family feel quite a while ago given its current size, and honestly I don't need festivals to play 4 or more trance DJs at the same time (and that comment is also true for dreamstate socal), so it was really nice to only have 1 or 2 stages at most at Euphoria and not have to stage hop or agonize that much.
Since I'll always regret never having been to Lumi 10 years ago when it was nice and small, it was actually fantastic to be able to experience this with Euphoria, and really I have to repeat how nice it was to have a festival where we were all one, no VIP, no backstage passes, and DJs coming to party with us and chat and have fun!
Also, while I enjoyed Captured festival last sept, the weather was pretty brutal (Thailand like hot and humid). Euphoria was nice and cool in May, even during the day, that was a true pleasure.
Now, if you're in Asia and february is not the month you're gone snowboarding, Unkonscious is still a very clear choice and another great way to spend 6 days with trance. If you're in Europe or Europe is closer, then Euphoria is clearly a great choice. And if you're just that dedicated, you can go to both of course :)

Now, the hard question is should Euphoria grow to allow more trance lovers to experience it without losing what makes it special? This is a tough question, and I'm not sure I have the magic answer to it. But the fact the organizers are so nice and dedicated to the event, I'm confident whatever they decide, Euphoria will remain a great place to go.

Euphoria was absolutely a unique event (and I mean that in a very good way :) ), and I'm so happy I managed to drag my butt there, this year.

If you want to relieve the best bits of all 6 days, you can see all the instagram stories all in one video:

As for the "will I go back?". Honestly I really want to. I'm not going to lie that going 24H after EDC Vegas was brutal, EDC really wipes you and it's another multi flight 16H trip which I can't do in coach and survive, so it was expensive. I'm super happy I did it though, and hope I can do it again. Also, I have to admit I also had a great time at Rong Malta which is 2 weeks prior, even though it's a bigger more mainstream festival, but also with lots of trance, and it's not reasonable to go to both plus EDC in the middle, so I'll have to pick 2 out of 3 no matter what. Decision, decisions :)
But for people with fewer life problems than me, haha, absolutely, please go and be part the family!

Huge thanks to Rich and Steve and all the DJs who played for us:

it's not enough to run the event, he also DJed multiple sets!

Links:

Getting to the welcome point was a bit tricky since it was a fair distance from the rideshare dropoff and the normal EDC shuttles would not get you there in time, but we made it and were eventually welcomed:

made it! (18:25 to be precise)

Given the pricetag, I should give the menu. They did absolutely deliver on what was promised, but indeed I was hoping for a bit more food given the price :)

first serving

second serving

One thing that was above expectation were the performers who entertained us. There were plenty and they did a great job:

The price did include all you can drink, alcohol :)

While enjoying desert on the 2nd floor, the next people were in line, and that was also our exit towards wasteland:

So there you go, hope it helps you decide, I'd say it was a good experience overall, but somewhat pricey.

This was my 10th EDC Vegas, time flies! And in these 10 years, EDC has become bigger every year, to the point that the 2026 edition fully sold out in less than 3 days. I'm not going to repeat what I already wrote in the previous EDCs I've been to, except that this year again, they've done a good job mixing things around and keeping things fresh.
The one thing I have to mention for trance lovers, is that in the last years, it's been clear that Trance has been shrinking slowly world wide. This is to the point that it's gone from Untold, which had the best Trance lineup of any mainstream festival, it stopped being relevant there several years back at Tomorrowland, and when I went to Parookaville, there wasn't much trance either. The list goes on...
So, even I'm a bit stuck on classic trance and I'm a bit sad to see it slowly disappear from many festivals, it wasn't very surprising that similar things are happening at EDC. Last year was the first time that the 3 days of classic Trance at Quantum Valley, were dropped to 2, and this year, depending on how you count, there was maybe 1-1.5 day combined (although day 1 did have half a day of lovely psytrance, which I believe is new). So yeah, we're not getting the 3 days of non stop Trance at Quantum Valley anymore, but Dreamstate is still a thing, just with evolving sounds, some are classic trance, some are psytrance, and newer sounds like Maddix. Also, let's keep in mind that:

So while it's evolving and it doesn't have the 3 days of classic trance at QV anymore, there was plenty of other music to check out, which is not a bad thing actually, that's my best place to check out other EDM genres in one location, and for the mere wow factor and spectable, I'll repeat that EDC is the best night festival in the world.

This year, as something new, I tried the Salvage City Supper Club that was located by Wasteland. It was an interesting idea and fun, but ultimately it felt somewhat expensive for the end experience and food. But if money is no issue, definitely worth giving it a shot. Read up on more Salvage City Supper Club here

The Grounds:

The insomniac folks aren't lazy, they come up with different stage designs every year. Here are some pictures from this year:

Of course, lots of fun areas to visit, especially in the VIP areas:

trinket trade got way too popular since last year :)

the VIP concierge area at Kinetic field was way too crowded

Kandi stations and Casino:

kandi stations

kandi casino was even more popular this year!

Passport was nicely setup like each year:

And because people get confused when they see this picture, this is not VIP but Skydeck, an uber VIP for people with too much money and trying to find creative ways to spend it :)

And all the lit up areas of course:

enjoying the new downtown EDC

Pixel Forest was moved this year and looked different:

A few vendors, like every year:

EDC still has the most rides of any festival I've been to. Fun!

And the many side quests:

Elevated views are of course very enjoyable:

Other views:

Fireworks and Drones

The fireworks were great like every year:

Day 1 Fireworks:

Day 2 Fireworks:

The People

this looked not comfortable to walk in, dedication :)

winning totem :)

bad ass!/

haha :)

funny, we found the same animation independently ;)

this is the way!

And we did our usual Trancefamily SF meetup:

The Insomniac Entertainers were great, as always:

And of course, it's always a good excuse to take pictures with friends ;)

Thor!

more LEDs!

And DJs :)

David Forbes

Paul was still amused ;)

Yoji, still being funny ;)

I was ready for Ben Nicky this time around ;)

The Maddix b2b Ben Nicky was epic!

First time seeing James Hype!

And as always, many picture opportunities:

the bees were overachieving :)

Day #1

Video Summary:

Day 1 Fireworks:

Day #2

Unfortunately, right after Miyuki's set, the wind picked up and Quantum Valley was somehow not built in a wind resistant way, which was slightly puzzling given that high winds have been semi frequent at EDC. As a result, QV was shut down for multiple hours, and we unfortunately missed a few sets as a result:

But other stages kept going:

thankfully QV was reopened later that night, in time for Maddix B2B Ben Nicky

Finished the night with TDJ at Bionic Jungle

Video Summary:

Day 2 Fireworks:

Day #3

One more night, night 3!

le youth, I had never heard before, interesting dreamy set

then, more techno with Miss Monique

Then came time for Armin at Kinetic Fields:

got a good spot, right in front of the uber VIP skydeck (the ones with the half million packages)

Back to Quantum Valley:

And then it was time to end the night with Tiesto's In Search of Sunrise Trance Set!

sunrise coming

And just like that, after a beautiful sunrise with Tiesto, the 3 days were over:

Video Summary:

Should you go? Would I go Back?

At this point, note that the text below is mostly the same as last years, since it's still valid :)

EDC Vegas is probably the most impressive EDM Night Festival in the world. Tomorrowland is a rival but it's not a night festival as more challenges I'm not as much a fan of (never mind of course the distance for me or the fact that you mostly can't buy tomorrowland tickets, while you can for EDC, although as of 2025 you have to be fast since they sold out in 3 days).

Like previous times:

Conclusion/Other thoughts

Thoughts about this year:

first it was password incorrect

and then this for most of the time

also this

Thank you to everyone at the insomniac team, all the performers, all the volunteers who put so much effort into making so many details right all over the place, with the great result that we all got to enjoy..

much love to our insomniac entertainers

So long, see you next time!

Video summary:

Other video bits from my real camera: