Review: North Coast Music Festival 2012

Three weeks after the Windy City’s final festival hoorah and we’ve still got North Coast Music Festival on our minds. Check out Erica Treais’s review of the festival and Rad Photos awesome photo gallery below. Hundreds of young raving teens showed up at Union Park to test out their dance moves at the three-day, Labor Day weekend party. The festivals primary musical focus was electronic dance music, though there were quiet a few brass, jam and rock bands in the line-up. We all seemed to luck out with three days of sunshine and nothing more then a bit of drizzle, unlike last years weekend of downpour. Papadosio, a group that spent a hefty amount of…

North Coast Music Festival 2012 Preview

Labor Day Weekend marks a last hurrah for music lovers in the Windy City and the crew running North Coast Music Festival has made sure there is a “little something for everybody” in this years line up. This is the third year of NCMF hosted at Union Park in Chicago, IL and the first act takes to the stage at 2:00 p.m. sharp. If you haven’t already bought your tickets, good luck! All but 3-Day VIP tickets have been sold out; if you’re lucky you can catch some of the after party’s going on throughout the city. Headliners include Pretty Lights, Girl Talk, STS9, and hometown heroes, Umphrey’s McGee. And when I mentioned there is…

A Big Gigantic Forest Finale

Campgrounds have been torn down, traces of life have been left scattered across the field at Double JJ Ranch, the sun will set on a place where only a day before, over 20,000 spirits resided. The magic of the forest has unfortunately come to at end and with that end comes lasting memories of a weekend filled with music, expression, dance and livelihood. Driving home by myself this morning with heavy eyes and a strong desire for a shower, I had a lot of time to look back at what I had just experienced. The crowd and their unspoken dedication to SCI and the rest of the artists performing, the artists in Sherwood Forest and…

Day Three – Electric Forest

Photos by e.Tree Photography It seems as if everyone and their mother went a little too hard on Friday night because everything seemed to run a bit slower come Saturday afternoon. Of course that is to be expected when Steve Aoki and DIM MAK play into the early hours of the morning and its a little difficult to avoid the “WOOP WOOP” when you’re staying in general camping. Yet come 5:30 p.m. on Saturday when Santigold took the stage, the party (including myself) seemed to regain that second wind. Santigold was a must see on my schedule for the weekend though she seemed a bit reserved, flowing lightly across the stage and making hand gestures…

Day Two – Electric Forest

Most of yesterday afternoon was spent running around, catching day shows and trying to find a break from the heat. A lot of good music came out of the day shows, including Big Gigantics’ saxophonist Dominic Lalli making guest appearances in both Cherub and Break Sciences’ sets.  I caught Nit GriT and Minnesota feeding a lot of bass to the crowd over at Tripolee and The Infamous Stringdusters had a large following at the Forest stage, just before sunset.  A sure highlight to last night was walking into the end of SCI’s set of extreme electronic music. The confusion right there, thinking that someone had spontaneously jumped on stage with some dubstep in the middle…

Countdown to Electric Forest 2012

Just days remain until the gates open for the 2012 Electric Forest Music Festival.  EFF makes its second appearance at the Double JJ Ranch in Rothbury, Michigan starting Thursday, June 28th.  Since my visit in 2011, the forest has evolved into a jam fanatic’s sanctuary and an electronic dance lover’s safe-haven. The String Cheese Incident will grace the stage with three nights of high-spirited and always groovy energy, along with two nights of lights with STS9, a bass explosion from Bassnectar, sitar jams from Thievery Corporation, and a re-dedication to EDM that hasn’t been seen on this side of the Mississippi. The festival channels EFF’s partnership with Insomniac, who just brought Las Vegas an incredible…