The firm cut its teeth on flinty club shows and mainstream EDM arena shows in San Diego, but this festival is its most overt effort yet to establish a space where underground acts can perform for a mainstream audience of about 15,000 people. “We had to evolve in different directions, and this is one,” said Johnny Shockey, co-founder of LED, the firm that birthed CRSSD, and Goldenvoice’s new dance music promotion partner. But midway through Day 1 of CRSSD, the fest seemed to find a sweet spot between the demands of a mainstream dance music party crowd and the more difficult veins of techno that might rewire their minds with regard to serious clubbing. Was it largely populated by muscular, tanned San Diegans trying to discover a more fecund strain of house music? Absolutely. Is it overtly geared toward the EDM audience’s move away from glow-sticky sounds toward more difficult material? For sure.
But it’s presented in a format familiar to fans of HARD and EDC, and might herald the next phase of where mainstream dance festivals are going. CRSSD – an underground-focused revamp from the San Diego dance music promotion firm LED - is almost entirely devoted to left-of-center sounds – Damian Lazarus, Hot Natured, DJ Harvey and a deep bill of relatively challenging acts. That was the mood at the opening day of CRSSD, a new dance music festival produced under the auspices of Goldenvoice but geared toward the mass of dance music fans looking for what happens after festival rave. The crowd of be-tank-topped San Diego EDM dudes cheered as he embraced his beloved and she said yes, yes, yes. In the mist of a fountain by the San Diego waterfront park, a guy dropped to one knee at CRSSD Fest and asked his love to marry him.
0 kommentar(er)
