Marc's Public Blog - Clubbing and Trance


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Ok, so I like electronic dance music, more specifically Trance. When I started in the 1990's, the US was a bit behind in that department.
Still, with San Francisco and San Jose nearby, I've had some opportunities to see some great EDM/Trance DJs. Back in the early 2000's, they sadly played club music in the US that was nowhere close to the hits they had composed and were known for, but over the years, as Trance started becoming more popular, those DJs finally started playing their good tunes in the US too, and maybe from 2004 on, it's only been getting better.
Popsicle Halloween 2004 was really the beginning of great music parties in the San Francisco Area, and thankfully things have gotten even better since then

As a matter of fact, after another 10 years (2015 and beyond) the good news is that Trance has grown quite a following in the US, and places like the SF Bay Area, and while Trance has been declared dead a few times in the last 10 years, it's still going strong here.
Trance Family SF is definitely strong in the area, we've been getting more big trance parties every year, including many top DJs that come visit us what feels like every other week now (as of 2018-2019), and through those events, I made many friends in Trance Family SF. Thanks to you all.

Over those years, I got the chance to meet a few of my favourite DJs, including Armin more than once, and my last hobby has been to work on lights for my shirt and pants (version 3) and (version 4)



You can find all the pictures here

Table of Content for clubbing:

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If you enjoy random EDM events and festival pictures, you can subscribe to And if you are curious about my outfit, you can read more about it on my led peacock engineer medium post

2019/03/23 TFSF9 at Midway SF
π 2019-03-23 01:01 in Clubbing, Tfsf
It's been almost a year since TFSF8 for which I had built my matrix shirt.

It was time to try my new beta shirt with 6144 pixels instead of 768 pixels per side. That was a lot more work (months of work to get a new driver working and port my code). It's not perfect yet, but it's a good start.

This was last year, Shirt v3:


And this year with my Shirt v4:



If you are curious, this page that shows how I built my EDM Festival and Burning Man LED Pants and Shirt v4 on ESP32 with RGBPanels and SmartMatrix::GFX.

Back to TFSF9, this year was only 2 rooms/DJs compared to the 4 rooms/DJs in TFSF7 and TFSF8 these last 2 years. There is a case to less is more, too many rooms makes it hard to enjoy much of anything, knowing that you're missing 3 other sets at the same time, but maybe 3 rooms would have been better, or at least using one of the indoors rooms instead of the somewhat chilly outside psytrance patio?

Anyway, I was there bright and early with my friend Triode to make sure I could enjoy the entire night, and got a few pictures during setup;


Kim checking out the VIP menu
Kim checking out the VIP menu

The 2 stages started going soon after 20:00 and the main room was more enjoyable than last year where it was overrun with smoke and a bit too packed at times:










Then, soon after 23:00, my I went to check out Triode's custom set he had been working on and telling me about during the week. As we jokingly said, I dedicated it as the "zero fucks given" set :) It was fun to see how it went all over and jumped from tune to tune just enough to tease you and then go in another direction. Quite fun and enjoyable:





After Triode, I went back to the main room for Ferry Corsten who went from midnight to 03:00.



In between, I went arond the rooms to mingle with the crowds and catch up with some friends:





Triode and Afik talking shop
Triode and Afik talking shop

And before long, it was 04:00, end of the evening. Thanks all for the great vibes and the music. See you next time!

Quick, very incomplete video summary:

See more images for TFSF9 at Midway SF
2019/03/09 Cosmic Gate @ SF Regency Ballroom
π 2019-03-09 01:01 in Clubbing
Cosmic Gate has been celebrating their 20 years with a tour that landed in San Francisco at the Regency Ballroom.

Taj opened the evening:



Then Cosmic Gate took over from 10:30 to 02:00 with lots of classics:


Emma Hewitt came for a surprise visit to sing multiple of those classic tracks:




After those tracks, they went on for the rest of the evening, great tracks and great night:



See more images for Cosmic Gate @ SF Regency Ballroom
2019/03/01 ATB at Mezzanine
π 2019-03-01 01:01 in Clubbing, Tfsf
Doors opened at 21:00 with Jonathan opening:


Niko took over after that:




After a long wait, ATB finally showed up at 00:30. Despite being close to the front, it was hard to take pictures due to lack of lighting and some bad apples in the crowd that were pushing and shoving to try and get closer. 2 out of control girls kept pushing violently and managed to damage my shirt. Too bad security guys were completely unreachable on that side of the room without losing the spot I had spent hours to get...

ATB's set, while on the short side (just 90mn), was good. I did my best to enjoy it despite the crowd and shoving issues that Mezzanine was unable to see or address:





After his set, he nicely came to shake people's hands, which is obviously not something you get at a big festival where you'd usually see him:




Video summary:

See more images for ATB at Mezzanine

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