ID Fest: The Crowd (nighttime)
Identity Festival feat. Eric Prydz, Nero, Porter Robinson, Le Castle Vania, Eva Simons & Adrian Lux Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion August 11, 2012
With dance music's increasing popularity stateside it comes as no surprise that someone would get a bunch of DJs to hit the road together playing amphitheaters across the country. Last year's inaugural trek of the IDentity Festival was so successful that putting it on again this year was a no-brainer.
Once again the tour swung through Houston hitting the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, bringing in kids in funny outfits from across the area to rage outdoors and perhaps confuse a mounted police officer or two.
After successful trips to both Summer Fest and the Warped Tour this summer we decided that another festival wouldn't be our doom. After all, it's not every weekend you get the chance to see some of EDM's finest out of Stereo Live and in the harsh light of day.
Adrian Lux was not the first performer to hit the stage Saturday afternoon but it wasn't until he started his 4 p.m. set that the show felt like it truly started. For the first time, the crowd started really responding to the music, making noise and moving their bodies. Apparently you can rage while the sun is out.
As for the set Lux was solid aside from one abrupt transition, which he apologized for. If the goal was getting the crowd primed for the rest of the day, then mission accomplished.
While she may not be a name in mainstream music yet, in the land of dance Eva Simons is pretty cool. With some solid tracks to her name and a handful of featured appearances with some of the genre's biggest names Simons has managed to boil down the whole of her career to a furious 20-minute set. "Take Over Control" provided the first big sing-along of the day, and Simons did a good job of giving the crowd the right amount of a good thing.
Here's what we like about Le Castle Vania: He's the type of guy that takes a pumped-up version of Smashing Pumpkins' "Zero" and smashes it straight in to Knife Party's "Internet Friends". It's electric and awesome and we wanted more of that outside-the-box thinking.
That said, we were left wondering why the guy seemed to have a pair of headphones around his neck he never seemed to use.
The late-afternoon crowds at the second stage may have been smaller, but that didn't mean they were lacking in energy. The crowd assembled to watch LCV danced just as hard as the partiers over in the pavilion, with the added benefit of having more room to spread out.
It felt like it was only yesterday that we saw Porter Robinson, and in the weeks since that show little has changed. Other than the lack of 8-bit graphics that defined the Language Tour the show was incredibly similar to his Stereo Live performance, just shorter. That doesn't change the fact that at age 20 he's sickingly good at what he does, it just means we'd like a little more time between shows to let the heart grow a bit fonder.