Ok, so I like electronic dance music, more specifically Trance. When I started in the 1990's, the US was a bit behind in that department.
Still, with San Francisco and San Jose nearby, I've had some opportunities to see some great EDM/Trance DJs. Back in the early 2000's, they sadly played club music in the US that was nowhere close to the hits they had composed and were known for, but over the years, as Trance started becoming more popular, those DJs finally started playing their good tunes in the US too, and maybe from 2004 on, it's only been getting better. Popsicle Halloween 2004 was really the beginning of great music parties in the San Francisco Area, and thankfully things have gotten even better since then
As a matter of fact, after another 10 years (2015 and beyond) the good news is that Trance has grown quite a following in the US, and places like the SF Bay Area, and while Trance has been declared dead a few times in the last 10 years, it's still going strong here.
Trance Family SF is definitely strong in the area, we've been getting more big trance parties every year, including many top DJs that come visit us what feels like every other week now (as of 2018-2019), and through those events, I made many friends in Trance Family SF. Thanks to you all.
Over those years, I got the chance to meet a few of my favourite DJs, including Armin more than once, and my last hobby has been to work on lights for my shirt and pants (version 3) and (version 4)
And if you are curious about my LED outfit, you can read more about it on my led peacock engineer medium post and if you'd like to read all my festivals or dreamstate, or clubbing posts, please click on the links higher on the page to get taken to those categories.
I was excited to see Daxon again, but in the Bay Area for the first time, on the day of my birthday party no less, lucky timing! It was great to have a TFSF event again!
Outside of being kind of sick last year and low energy as a result, Chateau Perché last year was quite impressive, so because my schedule allowed stopping by this year between other EU activities, I made plans to go back. This year, it was however a much smaller venue and to be honest underwhelming compared to last year. I heard unofficially that there were 3 times fewer people but the event was also over 2 weeks, so I wasn't sure if it was 3 times fewer times 2 weeks, or 6 times fewer people each of the 2 weeks. Either way it felt a lot smaller, which was not a huge deal, but one byproduct was fewer stages with fewer means for each of them.
Got lucky one night, there was dew in the air which worked great for lasers:
Music was however a problem for me, most of it I can't say I liked, which was unfortunate:
Grenier Grivois - intérieur Fast Breaks, Global Bass
Librairie du Conte - intérieur Shatta, Latin, Funk
Ruisseau des Dryades - extérieur Techno, Deep Techno, Hypnotic, Tech House
Archipel de Lorelei - extérieure Ecstatic Dance, Ambient, Chill Live
This year the caslte was a bit farther away, and thankfully they had busses from Paris that got you there in a bit over 2H. Meeting in Paris:
2H later
thankfully the walk from the bus to tipis was a lot shorter
security check was super fast and mostly 'please don't bring glass bottles'
the glamping tipis were decked out
and thankfully they had a charging station that saved my life
Like last year, you could bring all the food and drinks you wanted, and they had decent options:
I did have a crepe :)
La lutinerie had interesting workshops and shade:
for 'emergency use', they had a 'love room' for couples at night ;)
Some days, because it was too hot anywhere but in the shade, I went to hide :)
I wasn't the only one to hide :)
Later in the afternoon, people got into their costumes (or changed) and went from the campsite to the castle:
it was between warm and hot, plenty of water thankfully
A bit before sunset, I went to change too:
5 Stages, but they were not super fun during the day when it was hot:
that was funny though :)
Some vendors and displays:
Got better at night of course (except for the music that was often close to unbearable at almost all stages for me):
this stage really looked nice, but the music...
The people
One nice thing was all the nice costumes and how seriously people are taking the costume themes:
Jour 1, Hiver - La Danse du Marais Flamboyant (Transparence - Flamme - Brumer)
Jour 2, Printemps - La Parade des Nymphes Améthystines (Floral - Camaïeu Lila - Noble)
Jour 3, Été - Les Noces d'Ecailles et d'Ecume (Océan - Parures Argent - Chanson de Geste)
Jour 4, Automne - Le Banquet des Coeurs Effeuillés (Nudité - Abondance - Voiles)
This is what saved the festival for me, the people were awesome. Yes, they're my countrymen and all, but they just had great party spirit and put a lot of effort into costumes and lights, which I not only very much appreciate, but deserves extra credit when power sources to charge batteries, were limited:
the french equivalent of insomniac ground control, nice!
Conclusions
What fell short:
I missed the bigger forest where you could get lost, and end up in a stream if you were not careful. You could still can of venture frmo light to light, but given the small size, it was easy not to get lost and didn't have the same feel as last year
Stages last year had better quality of DJs with live performances like live Drum and Bass, Face 2 Face Vynil sets, and more
Last year had more psytrance and music that I enjoyed compared to this year
It's true that I know France is not known for its great trance and psytrance, but I was hoping for more than all this experimental stuff that was often so far out that I had to get friends help me to name it.
the glamping tipis were a lifesaver for me since I can't travel with camping gear, but they really could have used some kind of windows you could unzip at the top to get air in. They got uncomfortably warm during the day and the zippers are the bottom were kind of useless for airflow
I can't say it fell short, but I have to note that cell coverage was abysmal, which was a problem when you had to retrieve a ticket to get back on the bus if you didn't save it, or you tried to order a new bus to get home at a different time. They could have offered a few wifi access points linked to starlink or whatnot.
What I enjoyed:
I loved the people's party mood, costumes and lights.
Security was just the very basic necessary, you were allowed to bring food and drinks anywhere even if they had some for sale
No "cashless wristband" bullshit, you could pay with credit cards and phones, as it should be
price was pretty reasonable considering (around 250E for 5 days/4 nights)
transport in and out was good if you took the shuttles, no ridiculous waits like boom the last day
la lutinerie was awesome, the workshops they offered were unique and honestly really added to the festival (and this year they did things better by allowing signups online to avoid needless long lines)
Would I go back?
At this point, the reality is 'unlikely'. I don't get to go to a festival and say 'your music sucks', it's for me to enjoy it or find another festival with music that is more fun to me, and given the smaller footprint, and smaller amount of stages of the regular festival compared to the 10 year anniversary, it left me with fewer chances to find music that was enjoyable for me.
If I can get the dates to align, I may go back to Hadra, as I can work with psytrance more easily ;)
enough busses and it was easy enough to stand by on an earlier bus
I had known about Euforia for a few years, both the january 'transformations' event which I'm told rivals Transmission with its lights and lasers (or at least close to it), and the 3 day June event which seems to conflict with lumi most years, but now that lumi is not a concern for me :), it was a great reason to go check it out.
It is what I would call a 2.5 day event. Friday and Saturday nights (until 03:00 and 05:00 respectively) are the main events, and sunday has a day afterparty from noon to 18:00 (although apparently people stayed to party a bit later on their own). It was great that most of the event was at night as Europe was going through a heat wave strong enough to shut down Defcon in Holland and impact the opening time of lumi on one day. Euforia was by lovely lake, so I'm sure that helped with temps a bit, but ultimately it was still warm although for friday and saturday it was not a big deal since even if sunset was past 21:30, the sun went behind trees by 19:00 or so, making the temps, bearable.
Ontune, who runs the event, was super nice in answering me beforehand and assuring me that bringing my LED gear would not be an issue at all, he even wrote a note via Email I could have shown security if needed, but turns out security was super nice and didn't mind at all. This redeems poland in my eyes after the terrible experience at ASOT poland the week before and confirms that the main problem is going to a stadium (where ASOT was), whereas festivals, are fine.
I didn't come empty handed :)
For people without VIP unlimited food and drinks, the food options were excellent and plenty of drink options too. Much better than the average festival:
that was the sad part :(
I'm not posting every food vendor, but they were many, a good variety
VIP Area:
I didn't take enough pictures of the yummy meats, but they were yummy
Friday and Saturday Night Parties
Given that sunset is very late this time of the year, there was still plenty of light when I arrived around 19:30
people could kayak in and enjoy the music ;)
most people didn't speak much or any English, but still made friends :)
Hi Orkidea :)
I was equipped for Will Atkinson :)
Day 2, Saturday:
the 4th stage opened up, was the trance stage and had wonderful visuals and lasers
a few lucky people could stay right there and watch from their balcony :)
great lasers
finally got to meet driftmoon
spaceman at another stage, but not my music
mainstage was also quite nice, really good setup for the middle of nowhere
Talla 2XLC
And the party went late enough that sunset got there first :)
Sunday Day Party
I'm assuming that many polish people came from kind of far, so they had to drive home afterwards. That's likely why sunday was a day party that went from noon to 18:00. The hot sun made it a bit less fun, and only one stage, which makes sense:
got to meet and thank ontune
Review and Thoughts
So I probably can't ignore the fact that this was the same weekend than lumi, and it's hard to not talk about going to Euforia vs going to Lumi. Turns out that this is really a Polish event for Polish people, I'm not sure if I was the only foreigner, but there may not have been more than a handful :) So, let's lay down the facts:
Lumi obviously has more days, more DJs, and more hours
But lumi is mostly during the day, in potential hot sun (and it was hot this year). I really really appreciated that Euforia was mostly at dusk/night (all the way past sunrise on day 2)
Euforia had 3 stages on day 1, 4 stages on day 2, but if you were looking for trance, that was mostly one stage on both days (and it was the harder style of trance, no euphoric or Thrillseekers trance). Despite lumi having more non trance music, it still wins on trance content
My thoughts about lumi and its organizer are well known, and Euforia was much better across all fronts. Even for an event where everyone was kind of expect to speak polish, it was fine if you didn't speak any. People were nice, helpful and welcoming
Pricing wise it was very affordable, and turns out that for $350, VIP got you unlimited food and drinks (including alcohol) for both nights. That's not only a really good deal, but the food was actually amazing. The organizers deserve massive credit for that only and of course it's a huge plus compared to Lumi that still likes to charge everyone for $8 water one bottle at a time, providing no access to safe clean water. The food at lumi was also bad enough that I would make sure to eat before going. For Euforia, I looked forward to the wonderful food ;)
But as minuses go, Euforia apparently only allowed you to pay with wristband money that you had to recharge on your phone. That was unfortunate given that almost everyone has pay by phone or contactless credit cards. Also, I have to be honest that I didn't find a source of water, that wasn't bottled water, which if true, is not good. I honestly totally forgot to really check because I had unlimited food and drinks and security didn't really care if I brought water in since I had VIP anyway, makes sense.
Staying a 5 to 10mn walk away was less than $200/night, not too bad
Now, can I really recommend to non Polish people to go? This gets a bit more tricky: I have to be honest that it's really in the middle of nowhere. You can't reasonably go there without a rental car, it's 1.3h from Wroclaw airport, and 4h from warsaw airport. Given that, I would only recommend it for people already in Poland or already going to Poland for a trip (and Poland is a lovely place to visit)
But realistically it's not a real comparison, lumi is easier to get to, clearly has a lot more trance, more hours, more DJs, but if you're not a fan of how it's being run, don't want to be in the hot sun all day, are not a fan of sound bleed, overcrowding, or the 2nd worst security team I've seen in the world,
