[The Audiofiles] 2013 – A Year In Musical Review

January 8, 2014January 8, 2014Leave a comment

Looking back at my posts from the last year, one that stands out the most to be is my 2012 Year in Musical Review. Partially, because it’s catalyzed my writing career on multiple fronts – but mostly because music, especially kickass live music, is something I truly care about to my core. Music influences our moods, our personalities and even our daily interactions. Unless there’s something highly important and technical that I have a deadline for, I’m literally submersed in music 24/7 – from the time my alarm and I wake up, to my morning runs, to the drive to work, you get the picture: I more or less have provided myself with a soundtrack to my life. With my attention span as short as it is (…squirrel!…), I constantly refresh my collection of original jams, remixes and singles and try to take in as much live music as I can.

I’ve been leafing through the ticket stubs and reminiscing about the excellent year in music that I just had. From attempting to co-start a music forum site and to with The DJ List, my daily extra-curricular activities have always circled around new music, fresh artists and the latest and greatest they have to offer. Somehow, even though I’ve managed to be busier than I’ve ever been I’ve definitely managed to fit in some quality R&R (Rave & Relaxation) into the mix. So, without further ado – here are my musical musings for 2013; enjoy!

Live Shows: Concerts and Festivals

Best Trance Show:

Above & Beyond @ Avila Beach,

Cosmic Gate @ Palladium (Runner Up)

Truth be told, I’m sitting here trying my hardest to even place Cosmic Gate in second place because Above & Beyond’s sunset at Avila Beach was just so spectacular! It was a small crowd with unexpected surprises in store for everyone in my friend group – we each found someone at the event from out of town (LA, Riverside and SF) that we didn’t know was in attendance and were all simply wowed by the musical prowess the group possesses. But Cosmic Gate is not a team to be underestimated, during the live show they brought out my favorite pixie blonde vocalist, Emma Hewitt, and Jonathan Mendelson who gave a phenomenal first live vocal performance during Nic Chagall’s ‘This Moment’.

Best D&B show: Modestep at the Nokia Club, High Contrast w. Camo & Krooked at Dim Mak Studios

Best Dubstep show: Candyland, Krewella + Seven Lions @ the Hollywood Palladium

Best Deep / Tech House Show: Kaskade @ Focus OC’s 10 Year Anniversary

Best Progressive House Show: Eric Prydz / Pryda / Cirez D @ Create

Best Electro House Show: Gareth Emery @ XIV

Best Festival: Lightning in a Bottle

For the last six or seven years I’ve been a self-professed seasoned festival go-er and have a host of Insomniac, HARD and GoVentures events under my EDM belt (almost 40 if you want to get specific), but truth be told last year I only attended three festivals, one of them being Sea of Dreams on NYE. For as much as the lineup to HARD Summer thrilled my pants off, the event didn’t…however, Lightning in a Bottle and Sea of Dreams surely did. Each was musically right in their own right but on a more personal level, I truly felt bonded to the community that LIB and Burning Man cultivates and have actively been seeking out similar events ever since.

Best Festival Set: Keys n Krates, Dillon Francis, Alex Metric ((HARD Summer)) HeRObust, Pumpkin, Rusko, The Polish Ambassador, Odeza, Andreilien ((LIB)), LowRIDERz, A-Trak, Thievery Corporation ((Sea of Dreams))

Best Venue: Sea of Dreams @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium | NYE was one of the most amazing musical experiences I’ve ever had, everything about the night was golden and a lot of that is due to the venue and soundsystem that came with it; top notch.

Weird but Rad Venue: Lightning in a Bottle @ Lake Skinner, Temecula, CA | I was tempted to give LIB the gold star for ‘Best Venue’ but after the all of the shenanigans with the county and residents of Riverside, I’ll wait until next year to grant the festival that award. Basically, I want to see it shine in all of its glory; not just in my personal experiences but for the greater community in attendance as well.

Best Pool Party: Daylight

Best Party: Sea of Dreams

Best Up and Coming Venue: Sound in Hollywood

Favorite Reopened Venue: Create (previously, known as Vanguard)

Best Crowd: DoLab shows – Avalon | If you only remember one thing about the music scene in LA, let it be this: the Do Lab will always do you right. I always look forward to the art infused musical events they throw. Whether they’re at the Nokia Club, King King or out in the middle of nowhere Riverside – they make sure to cater to all of your senses and the people who show up are some of the nicest friends you hadn’t met you.

Douche-iest Crowd: XIV by Hyde, Greystone Manor, Sutra | I still hold by last year’s statement about Sutra, but now that I’ve finally attended events at Greystone and XIV I can easily bump those two to the top of the list. Maybe it goes hand-in-hand with my appetite for all things Do Lab and underground, but I can’t wrap my head around wearing 3″+ heals to a club and cozy-ing up to people just snag an extra drink (or five). I prefer the let-your-freak-flag-fly mentality of other events and prefer stomping around in flats to trying to maintain a proper demeanor in an outfit that’s definitely not meant for dancing.

Best Lasers: Create and Exchange have most definitely stepped their laser game up in the last year, far surpassing anything that Avalon has ever done (sorry guys – not knocking the place (it’s still rad!) but it’s true).

Ferry Corsten @ Exchange
Hit us with those laser beams
*pew pew pew*

Artists

Favorite Set/Act of 2013: Above & Beyond in Avila Beach

Best Surprise of 2013: Crywolf, Mitis, Kill Paris, Disclosure, Keys n Krates, Flume

So Glad I (Re-)Discovered: Bonobo, Emancipator, Shpongle, The Magician,

Remixes So Nicely: SubFocus, Flume

Best Remix-er: Boy Noize, Dillon Francis, Cazzette

Favorite Vocalists: Jonathan Mendelson, Alex Clare, Annabel Englund, MNEK, Chet Faker, Florence Welch, Emma Hewitt

Most Disappointing: Daft Punk everything; maybe because it was directly juxtaposed to Keys’n’Krates with their live instruments, but Duke Dumont was also pretty underwhelming live and looked like he was just pressing a button; last but not least, Cedric Gervais did absolutely nothing for me.

Vocalists Who Shouldn’t Perform Live with DJs: Danny Brown

People Who Should Be Reminded They’re Not DJs: Will.i.Am, Paris Hilton

Songs:

My Top 10 Songs of the Year

Depeche Mode – Soothe My Soul (Steve Angello + Jaques Lu Cont Remix)
Darkside – Papertrails
Oliver – Night is On My Mind (Dillon Francis Remix)
Disclosure – You & Me (Baauer Remix)
Seven Lions + Myon & Shane 54 – Strangers
Minnesota – Stardust Redux (Crywolf Remix)
Maya Jane Coles ft Karin Park – Everything
Thomas Jack – Booka Shake
Flume ft Freddie Gibbs – Holdin’ On (LKids Remix)
Lane 8 – Be Mine
Mat Zo – Lucid Dreams – (M Machine Remix) [runner up]

Favorite Soundcloud Sets:

Show and Tell:

Best Hosted Web Show: BBC Radio 1 Diplo + Friends, Above & Beyond Group Therapy

Best Site for Discovering New Music: Hypem

Best Sites for Shows: MetroWize LA,Resident Advisor, The DJ List

XP Points:

Festivals Attended: Lightning in a Bottle, HARD Summer, Sea of Dreams

Shows Attended: All Day I Dream (/Lee Burridge), Donald Glaude, Richard Vission, Porter Robinson, Seven Lions(x2), Ferry Corsten, Krewella (x3), Modestep, Mimosa, Kill Paris, Crywolf, Markus Schulz, KhoMha, Jamie Jones, Jack Beats, Style of Eye, Gareth Emery, Kaskade, Skrillex, Bauuer, Eric Prydz (x2), Above & Beyond, Cosmic Gate, Candyland.

Parties Frequented: None (weird!)

♥

[Doing It Right] 4th of July Weekend

July 9, 2013September 26, 2013Leave a comment

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.

– Robert Southey

rAWr!
Rocking my first Spirit Hood;
Welcome to the Tribe =D

Nails, check!

What a freakin’ whirlwind this last week has been; if it wasn’t evident by the lack of posts, I’ve been beyond busy and nowhere near a computer or strong internet for that matter. I know, I know – that sounds incredibly unlike me but at the same token I think that it was necessary. I had a few days with some of my closest friends from around the state to play, eat, drink, sleep and bounce to some amazing music all over the Southern and Central California coast.

I’ve been blessed with amazing people in my life and friends that span over space and time; the friendships I’m currently in the middle of are proof that you can know someone forever but you can get to know them in an instant. Each and every person that was part of last weekend plays an integral role in my life and I couldn’t be more thrilled that they’re part of my journey. And it was such a hodgepodge of personality! My close friend and former housemate just got back from two years in Shanghai and is ready to pursue new and exciting things on the East Coast, then my boyfriend and his best friend were there – and the beauty of it all is that she’s the one that introduced us! Then there was Anne and Jeff from the Bay Area, late additions sure but the best additions by far – Anne and I have known each other since Freshman year of high school and though I can’t say for sure why we’ve never been close before I know that I’m lucky to forge such a great bond with such a fabulous person! And Jeff, oh, Jeffery. What a perfect addition to our ridiculous group of people =)

The festivities started early on Wednesday night with an outing to Create – SBE‘s newest Los Angeles nightlife venture; being here for five years now I’ve seen just how quickly clubs change hands, but on the plus side this means that between WeHo, Hollywood and Downtown LA there are tons of awesome places to go and get your bounce on, including but not limited to: Avalon, Create, Lure, Greystone Manor, Dim Mak Studios, The Hollywood Palladium, King King, Los Globos and Exchange (phew!). And to boot, about half – the places in bold – are run by the Insomniac Events / SBE crew. Eric Prydz was the headliner on Wednesday and man did he put on a motherf&*king show, and he’s so different in a club setting like Create than a nighttime pool party like XS or a festival set from Coachella or EDC. The first hour he played as Prydz, the second as CirezD and the last he played as Pryda – the visuals echoed the alterego, and provided for both seamless transitions and an epic night of fun!

Reach out and touch faith.

As lame as it sounds, Thursday was spent being incredibly lazy with loads of sleep and I absolutely loved it! At nighttime, a few friends and I ventured over to Pasadena to see if we could take a gander at what was going on at the Rose Bowl. I’ve heard so many amazing things about their fireworks that I was beyond stoked to finally view them – this shot sums it up pretty well:

On Friday, we headed up to Avila Beach with a ridiculously fun group of friends for a weekend at the Hot Springs and a chance to see Above & Beyond play a sunset set on the beach; sound epic? Because it was! I wish I had more pictures but nothing could ever accurately capture what we both witnessed and took place in. Literally the best weekend of the year so far and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say best 4th of July weekend ever!

The cabins at the Hot Springs

There’s nothing more patriotic than BEER.

Reuniteeed!

On an adventure through Morro Bay

Above & Beyond
Avila Beach

The Crew!

Wowwww

[Doing It Right] EDC Weekend in Las Vegas

June 25, 2013September 26, 2013Leave a comment

I’m back from a whirlwind trip to Vegas with some of my hands down favorite people ever! We danced, we played, we raved and now we’re paying the price. Traffic was no joke yesterday but when you have an amazingly handsome reason to come home, it just seems to fly on by. Not only am I back home with some epic memories and an amazing group of friends, but I also have a new outlook on Vegas nightlife and a stellar PSA for you pretty party people about the “Las Vegas hat-trick-of-terror”

Hangovers, dehydration and hunger are awful, on you and most importantly…not cute! No one wants to carry their friends to bed, charge the bar for waters ever ten minutes or cater to your dietary needs – you’re a big kid now in a big kids playground so start acting like it! You don’t have to go home, but please GTFO of Vegas so the rest of us can get back to raging like the professionals we are, thanks much 🙂

I know I touched on the idea of Vegas being a mecca of dehydration last week but it really should be stressed more frequently: if you’re trying to go to pool parties in heats that are reaching to 103 or clubs packed to the max while drinking copious amounts of alcohol and shaking your groove thang, you should always have a bottle of water handy! For every alcoholic drink you consume, drink two hydrating drinks – and no, soda and chasers with caffeine don’t count, they’re actually diuretics that’ll dehydrate you even worse. One neat thing about water, the more hydrated you are – the easier the hangover on your body. Isn’t science neat?!

Ok, enough preaching – onto the party pics!

Friday night went from tame to turntUP in like 3.5 seconds; fine by me! We ended up gallivanting around the strip and discussing the debauchery in our near and present future the whole night. Also, I learned that even though I don’t need an entire bottle of champagne to myself…I totally do.

Saturday was a tame day; which was necessary after drowning myself in champ the night before – and at night we headed out to Daylight at Mandalay Bay to see Skrillex play a SunSET; absolutely amazing.

Daylight at Night; amazing…

That night we ended up at Light at Mandalay Bay for some dirty dubstep and Trap music courtsey of Baauer

Baauer at Light

On Sunday, we bounced out real quick so we could get into Krewella’s party at Daylight and let me tell you – so worth it; those girls throw down hard and they’re sexy as eff to boot. I might or might not have a total girl crush on both of the ladies in the group….

Last, but most definitely not least – we made it out to XS’s famed Nightswim for Eric Prydz from 1 til 4 am. Amazing as all hell; easily my favorite party in Vegas – where the hell else can you cannonball on people as a sick beat drops?!

For some more icing on this EDC weekend cake, check out this amazing set by Eric Prydz during day 2 of EDC weekend =)

[Doing It Right] EDC Weekend in Vegas

June 19, 2013September 26, 20131 Comment

Sin City.

The City of Lights.

The City of Lost Wages.

Whatever you want to call it, Las Vegas definitely has a reputation that proceeds itself.

Funny fact about me and my relationship with Las Vegas: the only tables I’m there for are the type you can dance on. I’ve never been much of a fan of gambling; Craps, Roulette, Poker, Blackjack, etc are wonderful games one can use as engaging mental tools – beat your friends, foes or simply learn to count the cards. It’s pretty effing interesting – well, at least to me. As a Statistics major, we had to compute the odds for each Vegas game by hand and let me tell you – Las Vegas wasn’t made on winners. That said, I tend to stay away from those types of things – however, when it comes to getting down and enjoying myself, I can (and do) hang with the best of them and make some pretty fabulous memories.

From the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay to the Thunder Down Under at the Excalibur, Las Vegas bustles with literally thousands of daytime activities for each and every personality type . People are constantly flocking in and leaving in just as much of a hurry – and the great thing about Las Vegas is it’s people from literally everywhere and every walk of life; to boot – Las Vegas is one giant celebration, and a mecca for people watching. There’s fireworks and people in costume, merry drunks parading the street with massive cups of booze and rowdy tables of gamblers.

Major Lazer Sunrise Set EDC Vegas 2011

Between the multitudes of Cirque de Soleil shows with residency in Vegas and the massive amounts of DJs with residencies, there’s always a hot show to see. And do you know what’s better than just one or the other? Light at Mandalay Bay is the perfect synthesis of both ideals; the club is packed with the latest and greatest in speaker technology, performers straight from Cirque du Soleil and a whole host of DJs with residencies over the Summer months! Not your thing? Just try one of the other dozens of clubs Vegas has to offer: swank people, sexy clothes and popping beats – they’re everywhere!

And this weekend, it’s going to be off the hook ridicu-crunk-ulous. Insomniac’s famed Electric Daisy Carnival is entering (what I believe) is it’s 17th year as a festival and after some hiccups in Southern California, had been transitioned to the Motor Speedway in Las Vegas. Though I’ve attended the festival in the past…six times to be exact…I don’t have any want or need to go anymore; it’s not that the events aren’t massive or amazing, but once you’ve been to a handful of festivals it’s only natural that you’d want to see what else is out there in the world of electronic music festivals.

So what am I doing instead? PARTYING (duh!) and sleeping, too….eventually. But first things first – it’s always smart to prep yourself. Firstly, if you’re trying to ball on a budget try finding a Groupon or use a discount site to find last minute rooms and load up on your favorite drinks before you get to Vegas.

Second – putting together the fact that it’s summer-summer–summertime and Las Vegas sits in the middle of a desert – the smartest thing you can do for yourself is load up on water and electrolytes. Sure, drinking is wonderful but save that mess for when the sun goes down. Trust me when I say being drunk and dehydrated is not cute. Another fact: Las Vegas has an altitude of 1000 ft. That might not mean anything to you right now, but if you’re from Los Angeles or New York – chances are you were born and bred at sea level. Because of the altitude, be careful while getting crazy with your crew. Try snagging a water at the bar every other trip and you’ll save yourself from a nasty hangover the next day. Chances are you want to be up in time to snag a lounge chair at any of the gorgeous pools. Just remember, there really is such a thing as too much fun 😉

To prepare the earbuds for Vegas, I’ve gathered a few mixes from the DJs I’ll be shakin’ my money maker to!

We’ll mostly be hitting up the pool parties at Light – Saturday for a Sunset Set from Skrillex and Sunday for Krewella; then I’ll be heading to my first offical Nightswim at XS for Eric Prydz. I’ve heard a million phenomenal things about it and I’m stoked to finally give it a whirl. Can’t wait to update everyone when I get back on Monday!

Xoxo

Music Monday: Movin’ and Shakin’

October 1, 20121 Comment

I think we’ve all been here before:

You’re all packed and ready to head out the door; your hands are full and your head is swimming with excitement over your weekend vacation. With the trunk packed and some snacks in the passenger seat, you head out on your journey….only to be accompanied by everyone’s mom and dog because it’s 4pm on a Friday and you live in the heart of ‘insert-major-metropolitan-city-here‘. Traffic on city streets is a little slow but that’s okay for you, you can handle it. You start to merge onto the freeway and suddenly you’re engulfed into a parking lot of metal, exhaust and horrible moods. Oh, no!

I grew up in the Silicon Valley, and let me tell you – even with all those Freeways (101, 85, 87, 280, 80, 180, 680, 880….) we had some of the worst rush hour traffic I’ve ever been in. And then I moved to Los Angeles. If traffic in the bay is deplorable, traffic down here is like being in the second or third layer of hell – respectively. Good thing this potentially awful experience has an antidote: music. When I know I’ll be stuck in traffic, I get on my computer the night before with a purpose – if my car isn’t moving, I think my body should be. I’m one of those creatures who hates sitting still, so if I’m not tearing rubber having a one girl car rave seems like the next best logical choice. Before I left for San Diego, I had a feeling I’d be sitting in traffic for a long, long time. So, I scoured my iTunes library and made a kickass playlist with new and old favorites that I could belt out and dance to. Chances are, I was “that” girl in my car – that girl having too much fun considering the situation at hand. But when you compare that to the people that looked beyond miserable, I’ll take it – life might not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here we may as well dance!