ARTS NEWS

What the Festival Announces Its Summer Lineup

Tickets on sale tomorrow at 10 am for the second year of this runaway hit electronic dance music festival.

By Sam Coggeshall April 3, 2013

The wading pool at What the Festival

Image: Courtesy Daniel Zeiterstrom

The pretty new baby in the festival ward, the electronic dance fest What the Festival (a.k.a. WTF), returns after its inaugural three-day run last summer, a resounding enough success that NBC News Entertainment declared it the “Millennial Generation’s Woodstock.”

Held in idyllic Wolf Run Ranch on the east side of Hood on July 26–28, the festival is billed as a series of “micro-experiences” (read: a barrage of stimulation from multiple sensory sources, simultaneously). Besides the big names on the stages (see below), there’s the micro film festival, the OMG Lounge (still a mystery to us), a local food market, the Oasis Spa and Lounge, photo booth, and a host of workshops from yoga to dance classes. Underneath everything is that festival vibe on a miniature scale, more Burning Man than Sasquatch, where the chaos is meant to be manageable and an escape more readily available. Maybe. If you tire of the music and the heat, hit the hookah and teepee lounges or the Splash Party in the giant 18-inch-deep wading pool.

Read our dispatch and check out our slideshow from last year’s madcap weekend.

Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10 am.

Here’s a preview of the lineup to get you dreaming of summer adventures:

A-Trak
This turn-table prodigy won the 1997 DMC World DJ Championship at 15. He transcends genre and context, moving seamlessly between the club and festival circuit. He wants to make you dance; maybe that’s why Kanye tapped him to be tour DJ in 2004.

The DJ at 15 and his winning spin:

And all grown up:

RJD2
The eclectic DJ and capable composer (Mad Men theme music!) is 10 years into a busy career and not stopping. Known for blending pop, hip-hop, cinema, and ambiguous quotes from bygone eras, the producer brings music that is alive, funky, beautiful, and strange.

Purity Ring
Dreamy, pretty club music composed by the hands of the Halifax-Montreal based duo Corin Roddick and Megan James.

YACHT
Definitely strange, dynamic, and magical, this Portland duo has been channeling their own thing for some time, blending new age with pop and hypnotic visuals for a weird trip of a good time.

Gramatik

This successful Brooklyn-based MC and rapper has been hooked on old funk and rhythm and blues since he was 3. He kicked off his own beat-making at age 13.