Posted by Scott Willats
Canadians are more than lucky this year. Usually, festival season means having to venture to some distant location to see our favorite acts in the flesh. But not everybody can afford the cost of a trip to Coachella or Electric Daisy Carnival.
This year, happily, some of the best fests are taking place right in our own backyards. WEMF you know about already — an automatic must-see. Then we have Digital Dreams, which promises to be absolutely sick: Duck Sauce, Afrojack, Kaskade — ’nuff said. And, of course, there’s the much-publicized Full Flex Express cross-country train tour, featuring Skrillex, Pretty Lights, Diplo and Grimes.
Also on the agenda: HARD Toronto on August4, featuring M83 and Justice along with locals Austra. Another must-see, right? But wait! Turns out the VELD Music Festival , featuring Deadmau5 and Avicii, is going down the same day. R’uh r’oh!
So Toronto goes from having no electronic festivals to having too many — a great problem to have, right? I dunno. Sure, we’ve got a large number of EDM fans in the city and province — but enough to support two festivals on the same weekend?
Granted, the music on offer isn’t exactly the same. Justice appeals to more of a rugged, indie-based crowd, while the VELD fest lineup is the definition pure EDM. (I mean, the mau5 even made a song called “The Veld.”) But for most fans, it’s not going to be a question of preferring one over the other. It’s more of a scheduling conflict that could end up costing one or the other of these fests a lot of audience — not because the promoters failed to assemble a good show, but because your average EDM fan just can’t physically be in two places at once.
I kind of think this problem sucks — but I also figure it’s better to have too much choice than too little. Either, it’s going to be a helluva festival season. A lot of people will be wearing out their summer tires that first weekend in August, shuttling between Hard and VELD. And I’ll be one of them.
