If there’s one thing Suwannee Hulaween is known for, it’s the festival’s ability to raise the bar with new experiences year after year.
Just when we thought the camping festival’s captivating Spirit Lake area—which is loaded with mesmerizing art installations and jaw-dropping performances everywhere you look—couldn’t get any cooler, its organizers have revealed a collaboration with DEF on a brand-new stage.
This year, the woman-led collective will debut their 360° “OFF LIMITS” stage at Hulaween to showcase the sounds of the underground. DEF in 2022 was named the best YouTube channel in EDM.com‘s list of the year’s best industry leaders.
“We are excited to officially welcome DEF to the Hula Fam,” said Michael Berg, founder and co-owner of Hulaween, in a press release. “Their unique curation and thriving community will be the magic that helps launch our new 360 experience OFF LIMITS at Spirit Lake. Their long standing history of attending Hulaween gives us great confidence and excitement in what’s to come.”
From drum & bass and UK garage to techno and house music, the stage will highlight an array of genres and is designed as an intimate ode to underground dance music. Its inaugural lineup features Will Clarke, Taiki Nulight, Bou, EAZYBAKED, Justin Jay b2b Nala and Manila Killa and Hotel Garuda’s CHROMEBODIES, among other artists and surprise guests. The stage will also include booming Funktion-One sound and Incendia’s fire effects.
“This is truly a full circle moment for us,” DEF added. “Our DEF team, friends and fans have all been a part of the Hulaween family for nearly a decade and now we have the opportunity to merge both worlds. We’re so excited to bring DEF energy to the magic of Spirit Lake, and showcase some of our favorite artists from across the world. We used to joke about a DEF360 stage at Hulaween and now it’s actually happening.”
Beyond the “OFF LIMITS” stage, Hulaween’s beloved Spirit Lake venue will include a massive spread of mind-melting art, including the festival’s signature visual projections on the lake, large-scale sculptures and thespian performances.
The festival’s stacked 2024 lineup includes Tipper, Chris Lake, Chase & Status and many more. Plus, Grateful Dead co-founding member Bobby Weir will join The String Cheese Incident to debut a new collaborative alias, The Bobby Weir Incident.
Suwannee Hulaween will run from October 24-27 in Live Oak, Florida. Head here for tickets and more information.
Sunshine, cool breeze and a big city skyline made for one unforgettable weekend in Brooklyn for Chris Lake‘s Black Book Records.
The British superstar showcased the sounds of his beloved label on July 19th and 20th, transforming the Brooklyn Army Terminal into a house music haven. Fans there were treated to two days of pristine house selections on a waterfront stage with panoramic views of New York City’s iconic skyline.
The first of Lake’s two curated lineups featured Andruss and Jojo Lorenzo alongside a special performance by Lake’s Anti Up partner-in-crime, Chris Lorenzo. The second evening featured the music of Harry Romero and Cole Knight as well as a special guest appearance by the legendary Green Velvet. This incredible cast of DJs provided an outstanding showcase of Black Book’s ethos.
The twin bill was produced by the renowned New York City-based dance music event organizer EMW Presents. Check out a photo gallery from “Black Book on the Pier” below.
Fresh off the release of a massive EP, electronic music icon deadmau5 is now landing in Bentonville, Arkansas for a special summer performance.
Taking over the stunning Momentary Green, deadmau5 will land in Arkansas on August 24th to light up the venue’s “Live on the Green” concert series on the Coca-Cola Stage. The sprawling, picturesque venue is the perfect host for his transformative live show, offering an intimate open-air experience. Tickets are are on sale now.
Fans attending the rare show will hear music from some EP, which deadmau5 released last week. The stunning project includes the first single released in 10 years from TESTPILOT, his shadowy techno alias.
c/o Momentary
The Momentary opened in Northwest Arkansas in early-2020 as an extension of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, serving as a hub for contemporary visual, performing and culinary arts.
The renowned team behind the Momentary launched the 2024 “Live on the Green” series in April with a performance by Jon Batiste, and has since featured John Legend and Portugal. The Man, among other contemporary music superstars. Forthcoming shows will include the likes of TLC and Shaggy, Gary Clark Jr., Omar Apollo and deadmau5’s Kx5 counterpart, Kaskade.
You can find out more about deadmau5’s headline show at the Momentary here.
The electronic music superstar has grown into one of the scene’s most authoritative artists in recent years. He operates his own festival, Summoning of the Eclipse, and launched high-profile joint endeavors alongside Mello as well as Space Laces and Eptic, with whom he launched the MASTERHAND supergroup. Not to mention his headlining alter ego, VOYD, and house music project, DEADROOM.
Now, SVDDEN DEATH will travel across the country for a fall 2024 tour, “Heretic.” The tour will feature special guest performances from Kill Safari, the collaborative alias of electronic music veterans Kill The Noise and Bro Safari, who also joined SVDDEN DEATH at the last iteration of Summoning of the Eclipse. The “Behemoth” producer is also set to bring out VAMPA, yvm3, PYKE and BEJALVIN on select dates.
You can view the full list of cities and dates on the first phase of SVDDEN DEATH’s “Heretic Tour” below.
SVDDEN DEATH will kick off the “Heretic” tour on November 7th, 2024 in Buffalo, New York. Pre-sale tickets go on sale Thursday, July 25th at noon local time with code “HERETIC.” You can register for the pre-sale here and check out the full list of dates below.
Dubbed “the world’s wettest party,” S2O Festival is gearing up to make a splash with its U.S. debut at the Brooklyn Mirage over Labor Day Weekend.
S2O Festival, one of Asia’s premier festival brands and the biggest Songkran (Thai New Year) celebration, has held massive events in Thailand, Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam. Following the event’s inception in Bangkok back in 2015, S2O has soared across the world’s largest continent with consistently top-tier dance music lineups and their signature, breathtaking water effects.
S2O Festival is now heading stateside for the very first time thanks to Pulse Events, an accomplished event producer and promoter who has previously hosted the likes of Martin Garrix, SLANDER, Afrojack, Gryffin, Seven Lions and many more.
Headlining S2O Festival on August 31st and September 1st, respectively, Marshmello and Subtronics are bound to enchant as they take the decks at the Brooklyn Mirage. The lineup features additional sets by Alan Walker, Timmy Trumpet, ARMNHMR, LEVEL UP and a special B2B between Said The Sky and EDM.com Class of 2021 star William Black, among others.
c/o Press
In partnership with S2O Festival and Pulse Events, EDM.comis hosting a special, exclusive contest for an opening DJ slot at Brooklyn Mirage. Entrants are invited to submit 30-minute mix, and the winner will be selected by the festival’s organizers through a combination of votes, comments and the overall quality of their mix.
Contestants must be at least 21 years old to enter and individuals from all countries are eligible. Submissions for the contest will close on August 3rd, 2024 at 11:59pm ET (9pm PT). Find out more and enter the S2O New York DJ Contest here.
Hold onto your synapses because Anyma is rewiring Las Vegas’ nervous system after selling out his historic residency at the Sphere.
The superstar Italian DJ is set to become the first electronic dance music artist to perform at the arena inside the $2.3 billion venue, the world’s largest spherical structure.
After revealing a landmark New Year’s Eve headlining show, the Sphere added five more events due to “incredible ongoing demand,” per a press release. All six concerts comprising the groundbreaking residency from December 27th to January 1st sold out in less than 24 hours.
Anyma, who is beloved within the electronic music community for his haunting and immersive visuals, will be remixing the laws of physics in the giant orb, which contains the world’s largest- and highest-resolution wraparound LED screen. The DJ in 2016 co-founded the Afterlife label and touring brand, whose cerebral approach to techno has effectively reinvented the genre for today’s generation, mutating it into a dazzling—and oftentimes chilling—live music experience.
Anyma’s residency is a watershed moment for the pioneering Sphere, where only a handful of legendary rock and jam bands have performed prior: U2, Phish, Dead & Company and The Eagles. And as this EDM-fueled spectacle takes shape—quite literally in spherical form—he’s promised “the best show” of his remarkable career thus far.
“Three years ago when I started Anyma I would have never believed we’d come this far – all I can say is Thank You,” he said. “To all 100,000 of you attending I promise to give you the best show of my life, with special surprises and guests lined up.”
The iconic Hospital Records is known for taking drum & bass to places it’s never been, but the team behind the label outdid themselves this time.
Hospital literally took their music to new heights in the skies of Bristol, where they recently hosted the city’s first-ever hot air balloon rave. The ambitious event came to life via a collaboration between Hospitality (the label’s global events arm), the summertime event organizer Siren and the nonprofit RIOT Noise.
Together, they organized the skyward rave and brought in Hospital Records artist Anaïs to DJ. A small group of contest winners packed into the gondola and partied to her blistering blend of jungle and drum & bass as a drone followed in close pursuit to capture stunning, panoramic views of Bristol.
“When you think of Bristol, a couple of things come to mind, and that’s an unbeatable nightlife, and hot air balloons,” said Tom Hoyle, co-founder of Siren. For us, this was a no brainer… It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and what I love about Bristol is that it encourages you to make these wild ideas actually happen. We ran a competition for anyone to apply for a spot in the basket, and we were overwhelmed with the amount of responses we got.”
The event arrived ahead of Hospitality on the Harbour, scheduled for August 3rd at Lloyds Amphitheatre in the heart of Bristol. Anaïs features on the bill, which is topped by drum & bass superstars Andy C and Netsky.
Check out a photo gallery from the rare UK rave below.
South Florida techno and house-heads know that Factory Town is the place to be over Halloween weekend for sunset-to-sunrise grooves.
Hocus Pocus annually hosts some of the biggest artists from across the globe to celebrate spooky season with a bang. And its organizers, Link Miami Rebels, have booked their biggest lineup to-date for the festival’s fourth installation in 2024.
The Martinez Brothers, Charlotte de Witte, Jamie Jones, Cassian, ARTBAT, Dennis Cruz, Eli Brown, Patrick Mason and EDM.com Class of 2023 stars AMÉMÉ and Indira Paganotto are just a few of the artists to DJ at Hocus Pocus, which is also debuting a brand-new stage. Fast-risers like X CLUB, Shlømo, LF System and more will also showcase their skills.
Plus, for the first time ever, Hocus Pocus will feature a special Haunted Warehouse add-on experience for those who enjoy a good scare. Combined with the event’s four stages and top-tier audiovisual production, attendees are in for a can’t-miss Halloween festival experience.
The festival will take place over three nights at Factory Town, from October 31st to November 2nd. Music will run all night long, from 7pm to 7am, across four haunted stages. You can purchase passes to Hocus Pocus 2024 and the special Haunted Warehouse add-on here.
In what will be one of the last events of its breakout 2024 season, Breakaway Festival is returning to Charlotte with a monster lineup in September.
The largest touring festival in the US, Breakaway is officially coming back to the zMAX Dragway Grounds at Charlotte Motor Speedway and bringing fans a lineup of epic proportions. Electronic music superstars Alesso, Marshmello and Chase & Status have been billed to headline the festival’s first day while its mainstage will host sets by FISHER, Loud Luxury and EDM.com Class of 2023 star Knock2 on its second day.
Day one of Breakaway Carolina will be particularly heavy-hitting with sets by Apashe, Wax Motif, Juelz, Rich DietZ and CHYL as well as a stage takeover from Brownies & Lemonade and a can’t-miss performance by Kenya Grace. The festival’s second day is bound to be equally as explosive, bringing in house heavy-hitters such as DJ Susan, Nostalgix and Matroda.
EDM.com has joined forces with the organizers of Breakaway Carolina for a special giveaway of two VIP Weekend Passes and an exclusive merch bundle.
Find out how to enter the giveaway below. Tickets are available for purchase here.
EDM.com & Breakaway Carolina 2024 Giveaway
2x VIP Weekend Passes
Breakaway Festival merch bundle
To enter the giveaway, follow @breakaway, @breakawaycarolina and @edm on Instagram, and tag at least three friends in separate comments on the post below (1 entry per comment, unlimited entries allowed). Share the post in an Instagram Story and tag @edm for a bonus entry.
The contest ends on Friday, July 26th. The winner will be announced in a comment and alerted via our Instagram the next day.
When twin brothers Blake and Joel Atchison were growing up in Nashville, an electronic music scene didn’t exist.
The city is known as an iconic bastion of country music, but at that time, the words “Nashville” and “EDM” were rarely used in the same sentence.
The Atchison twins spent their childhoods playing in the river and visiting record shops, until they snuck into the first-ever Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Little did they know, they would go on to play a pivotal role in the development of Nashville’s EDM culture as the innovative founders of Deep Tropics.
With backgrounds in sustainability, they always harbored a vision for fusing the worlds of environmentalism and music. In college, they studied agriculture, green energy and city planning and even received an EPA grant to run a biodiesel project that powered the Appalachian State buses.
Blake first began producing electronic music events in Nashville in 2008 and went on to create the production company Full Circle Presents, which organizes shows featuring music in house, drum & bass and other sub-genres of electronic dance music.
The “Decompress” party series, which has hosted the likes of John Summit, Justin Martin, J. Worra and more, began in this time. At first, the parties happened every month to six weeks. Now, they run three times a month.
“Consistency really helps the growth of the scene,” Blake Atchison tells EDM.com in an exclusive interview. “Now, we have multiple options for shows to go to, like a normal city. But, it hasn’t always been that way. Even 10 years ago, that was unheard of.”
“I think what makes Nashville really unique and special with the culture here, is there’s a scarcity of shows and parties in this scene,” he continues. “So, I feel like everyone here really appreciates it. I think artists feel it. They’re surprised when there’s a scene and when there’s people that know their music. It’s a really cool time in the city.”
Full Circle Presents now throws between 200 and 300 shows each year. Throughout the process of cultivating an EDM culture in Nashville, one of the biggest hurdles they faced, Blake recalls, was a lack of proper venues for the electronic shows.
“We were going into rock ‘n’ roll rooms, bringing in extra supplemental sound, video walls and lighting, then having to sell the agent that this is an acceptable place for their artists to come play,” Blake explained. “Now, we have venues like The Office and Cannery Hall, with a Void sound system in the small room, a PK Trinity in the main room and The Hennessy sound system in the middle room. It’s unbelievable to see the growth in production value with the venue ecosystem.”
The thing that makes it all worth it? Community, the brothers agreed.
“That is what makes our organization special, that we are all like-minded and we’re doing this for the love of the music, and for the love of the community,” Blake says with a smile. “To see the diversity in Nashville and the richness of the culture, how it’s growing, that’s what fires us up and what makes it all worth it.”
Deep Tropics Music, Art, and Style Festival.
Austin Friedline
The first ideas of designing a music festival came to life in 2016, a time when the city “didn’t have a proper electronic festival,” Blake said. “It rose out of necessity for Nashville culturally.”
Blake and Joel spent a week in the Northern Californian woods, discussing everything from talent to sustainability. After the creative brainstorming session and a “serendipitous meeting” with John Hanna, a Nashville-based DJ and investor, Deep Tropics was born.
“Nashville is Music City, it’s more than a country city,” Hanna tells us of why Nashville was the perfect location for Deep Tropics. “Country has taken the limelight, but even back in the day, Jimi Hendrix was writing his album here. People outside of the country lane have historically existed here. Just over the last 10 years, with the influx of different cultures, we’re starting to see a rise in much more than just country music. We’re happy to help that come about.”
Besides bringing a large-scale electronic music festival to Nashville, where a thriving scene was now craving a bigger event, the team’s goal was to deeply infuse environmentalism into its bedrock. Sustainability has always been at the core of the vision for Deep Tropics; now, it is considered “the greenest festival in North America.”
Last year, Deep Tropics replaced most of their diesel generators with electric generators and batteries. Their goal for the 2024 festival is to ditch them completely and power the event fully on renewable energy in addition to a modicum of ancillary grid power.
According to Deep Tropics, the festival’s team diverts a staggering 96% of festival waste from landfills. They also annually offset their carbon footprint via a massive tree-planting initiative.
The key to this eco-friendly success is by meticulously stewarding the festival’s sourcing, the team explained. They only use materials that are compostable—without any single-use plastics—and they also reuse as much material as possible, even when it comes to art and decor.
Through a partnership with a recycling business called Terracycle, “impossible items” like microplastics and cigarette butts are able to be reclaimed. Other sustainability efforts at Deep Tropics include an “infinity cup” program in which attendees employ a stainless steel clip to reuse their cup for the entire festival.
They also implemented an eco-band program, which offers prizes while benefiting nonprofits and helping plant 10 trees through a partnership with an organization called Trees for the Future. Throughout the year, Deep Tropics also offers opportunities for people to plant trees themselves.
c/o Deep Tropics
“This year, we’ve taken a couple trips to the R.A.N.C.H. Project so people have an opportunity to actually get their hands dirty and plant trees and work on a farm,” Joel Atchison tells us. “That’s what gets us the most excited, is providing opportunities in our own community. We provide outlets for people to connect with other nonprofits and organizations that are doing cool things. So in addition to promoting artists, we’re also promoting organizations that are doing amazing things in the community.”
The festival’s sustainability initiatives are all made possible through Blake and Joel’s organization, Deep Culture.
“Deep Culture supports harm reduction and safety and champions consent and boundaries,” Joel said. “People really act differently when there’s zero trash cans on-site, there’s not trash all over the ground. Our intention, to promote personal growth and holistic wellbeing within the event, is definitely a distinguishing aspect from other festivals.”
Deep Tropics hosts a variety of dynamic workshops and wellness experiences, like ice bath activations, runway shows and clothing swaps as well as discussions about regenerative agriculture and sustainable fashion.
“We really go all out to make sure there’s plenty of places for people to rest and get educated. We see Deep Tropics as a bridge between party and purpose,” Joel gushes. “We push for sustainability, wellness, anything that is going to inspire people to connect, build community or champion values like consent, equity, human health and resilience. Those are the ideas that we’re certainly trying to get across.”
When asked why it’s important for event organizers to promote sustainability, Joel says that music festivals represent special chances to connect with people and foster change.
“There’s this mainstream narrative that we are separate from nature,” he explained. “When we realize that caring for the Earth is connected to caring for ourselves and our communities, there’s a huge paradigm shift that happens. If there’s no planet, there’s no people. The science is out—we have a major social and ecological crisis going on and so it’s just our responsibility. And I think it’s a really unique opportunity for the festival promoters and event organizers to incorporate that. You’re catching people and at a moment where their minds and their hearts are maybe more open than they will be for the rest of the year. So, what a great opportunity to educate.”
Deep Tropics Music, Art, and Style Festival.
c/o Press
The team shares a long-term vision for the future of Deep Tropics, which they see expanding into a week-long conference in Nashville, similar to Miami Music Week, SXSW or the iconic Amsterdam Dance Event.
“We want to go beyond this festival model, which is a great example of making this weekend event as sustainable and regenerative as possible, and go in beyond that, to make Nashville the most sustainable city that it can be,” Blake said.
The team is taking a step towards that goal by virtue of Deep Culture’s Sustainability Summit, which is scheduled to take place on the Thursday before Deep Tropics 2024. The event will moonlight as a convergence of industry professionals and government officials across different sectors, from food and farming to infrastructure.
“We really want to showcase regenerative solutions and innovation,” Hanna says. “There’s a lot of great stories to tell. So, we’re going to take a crack at our first annual Sustainability Summit this year and see if we can inspire Nashville.”
The Deep Tropics team leaves us with some advice for any event organizers who hope to adopt sustainability at their own shows and festivals.
“Move beyond the mental block of the cost-prohibitive nature, and understand the responsibility that we have, and the power and inspiration that the music industry has,” Blake urged. “From a sponsorship level, people probably wouldn’t be involved or give the kind of money that they do, if we weren’t doing some cutting-edge stuff. I think people gravitate to that on a sponsor level. With a reusable cup program, there’s great organizations that have been doing that for a while now, where you’re creating a revenue stream for the festival. In turn, they can offset the cost of composting and recycling. It’s a journey and we are figuring it out as we go along, but we’re always down to share ideas and what we do with other organizations.”
For Joel, the biggest advice is to embrace the power of collaboration.
“Definitely hit us up,” he said. “We bill ourselves as the greenest festival in North America, not because we want to be the best, but because we want to inspire people.”
“The message that I’d like to give to festival producers is, people care more than you think they do,” he adds. “By taking these steps, it will inspire a different type of behavior. There’s not another place that generates as much inspiration as the music industry. So by making a difference at an event, you’re going to be inspiring a lot of business owners and inspiring the world at large. If we could make the music industry across-the-board more sustainable, I think the whole planet will follow suit.”
Deep Tropics 2024 will take place August 16-17 with performances by RL Grime, Kaskade, Elderbrook, PEEKABOO and many more. Tickets are available here.
