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 of their set, really blew my mind. Walking into that space, not knowing their capabilities as electronic artists was truly an awakening experience. It only gets me more excited for the production that is sure to come in night two of Cheese.

Of course there were your standard festival lineup “issues” having Thievery Corporation and STS9′s sets almost completely overlap. And the curators and artists in the forest sure did not make it easy to “cut through” in order to make it to another stage in a fashionable time. Steve Aoki closed out the late night show at Tripolee, with girls floating through the crowd on inflatable boats and his spontaneity, compelling him to climb to the top of the sub-woofer mid set.

A side from the music, the artists of the forest have really outdone themselves; the complexity of the lasers, the sculptures buried deep in the shadows that festival goers literally trip over, and the live performers that create a traffic jam in the middle of the forest path. One makes it a priority to exploring the forest, even if just for a few moments before carrying on to the next stage. Last night the forest kind of swallowed me for a bit of time, wandering throughout and trying to produce magic with my iPhone camera. There wasn’t a single space that was left untouched; such a captivating event that you almost forget you’ve come to for the music.

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