Marc's Public Blog - Clubbing

2025/08/28 Hadra (psy)Trance Festival in Southern France, A Smaller Ozora

π 2025-08-28 01:01 in Clubbing, Festivals

Since I was already in Europe for Mysteryland the week before and Captured Malta the week after, Hadra fit very nicely in between the 2, and allowed for visitng nearby parts of France I had never seen. I corrected the title to point out that there is no trance at all, but indeed definitely psytrance, mostly dark psy. There were other kinds of psychedelic music, a bit like what you'd find at Ozora, and a bit more variety than Boom.

Unfortunately it was yet another summer festival that got rain, but thankfully none when I arrived, none when I left, and very little during the festival days when I was there (thursday evening to sunday morning), but it rained apparently a lot on sunday afternoon to the point that the festival prevented people from driving out per some local order, and honestly that felt very questionable. Thankfully I did get out before that happened.

I can report that I didn't get wet, yes! :)

Festival Grounds

the google GPS location was not quite correct, but it wasn't too much of a drive around

getting in took many hours for those who arrived earlier, but thankfully by arriving later, entrance and security were pretty fast

the box office was quick

security was also pretty quick when I arrived (apparently kind of bad and slow earlier)

This is where I owe huge thanks to Bel étoile for getting me the last 4 person tipi. I had way too much gear to carry (and honestly it was not fun to drag all the way from the parking lot in dirt and uneven ground), I had no room extra camping gear, but once there, the tipis were well located related to the festival.

tipis were spacious enough

ready to party!

real showers without long lines, as well as plenty of toilets

Plenty of food options, and they took real money! (some even took cash, just like Ozora)

yum!

Plenty of shops and nice art at night:

All in all the domes and stages were nice and pretty:

even some games

mikado!

fun talks

there was a lake, but it wasn't safe to bathe in

mainstage

Power-wise, which is a concern for me given how much power my outfit, needs, there were a few plugs running sometimes, where I was able to recharge my battery packs a little, but nothing easy. At least it was better than tomrrowland that had absolutely 0 power for campers.

It did rain a bit during the 2nd day, creating mud. The organizers nicely spread some hay to help:

People and Mdose

Compared to Chateau Perché, there werent' nearly as many people with cool costumes, but a few did:

water theme, some came disguised as jellyfish

The highlight, however, was the audio walk with Aiz. It was a very cool experience, role playing-like with a full story narated while walking around the festival, and doing silly things that no one understood because they didn't have the headphones with the story:

Aiz has both an impressive setup and really good acting skills

Festival Days

There was music day and night, but most of the good stuff was at night, and ran all night. Mainstage mostly ran dark psy:

I got to see Okapi again, with his hilarious video game-like music

mainstage was Ozora-like, just smaller

video summary:

Final Thoughts/Conclusion

Since I did Chateau Perché juste a month earlier, also in France, I can't help but compare the 2:

CP was easier to get to from Paris (a lot closer)

Attendees did a much better job coming with cool costumes at CP, they took it seriously

Hadra was definitely more psytrance oriented (with dark psy nightly as the focus) while CP did have some dark psy, but had a much bigger variety of EDM genres, which I found a plus (even if neither had any trance, since trance doesn't really exist in france)

Hadra is 4-5 days (thursday morning to monday morning) although the main festival is 3-4 days, while CP was one day shorter

Walk from CP entrance to tipi felt a bit shorter and easier to navigate, but both were a pain (about 1km or more on uneven grounds)

Both festivals had rain, which was disappointing, CP got more rain and mud although thankfully it wasn't terrible

I felt like the castle background for CP was more fun, but it took a lot longer to walk from stage to stage

But Hadra wins if you're looking for a mostly psytrance festival with dark psy every night, it's clearly what it's about

Also, they had Okapi! https://youtu.be/l9hjU3f5vzY?si=ecRzLFVdjPE8XJLa&t=1215

All in all, Hadra was enjoyable, and definitely a worthwhile alternative to Ozora that is easier to get to and experience. Also it did not seem to suffer from the theft issues at Ozora. The main downside is unless you were in a wheelchair, you could not drive your car next to your campsite like Ozora, or Nature One, you had to suffer a long walk with luggage in poor uneven terrain, which is an issue for me when I'm carrying 80kg of luggage due to computer, photography and my LED gear.

Links

google photos pictures

video summary: https://youtu.be/l9hjU3f5vzY

summary of instagram videos: https://youtu.be/mSlq1nGBUuY

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2025/08/23 Mysteryland by Amsterdam Airport

π 2025-08-23 01:01 in Clubbing, Festivals

Mysteryland was apparently the longest running EDM festival in the world. I say was, because for the first time dating back to 1993! I also found out that the theme and ideas were licensed to Tomorrowland, and that it was indeed based on Mysteryland. Once inside, it indeed felt like a smaller tomrrowland, although this year it was also lesser as the organizers decided to retire apparently. As a result the footprint was smaller, some things were apparently missing, and some obvious things like bathrooms were in unacceptable short supply, which for a festival older than 30 years, is hard to excuse. Another thing was the fact that it was cut in half by a freeway, which apparently is normal, but honestly kind of weird and made it a bit annoying to get from one side of the festival to the other.

People

Met our Swiss/Dutch friends who nicely helped us get setup with the hotel:

I managed to use the opportunity to say hi to a few DJs as well as friends:

A few people came with costumes:

Festival Day1

Day 1 thankfully had trance at the trance stage (but only one day). Farius played a lovely set, although I missed half of it given that it took a very long time to walk from the south entrance to that stage which was at the exact opposite, across a freeway that cut the festival in two:

Farius and then Ruben

Nifra was next, but that was more techno than trance

hardcore/hardstyle was a big thing now, 2 days at this nice indoor stage

mainstage was decent

Laura Van Dam

back to trance with Fadi/Aly and Fila

Cosmic Gate

Time to walk around a bit:

the days were long, not much darkness

Back for PvD

After PvD's set, there was a bit of time to see fireworks at mainstage, which were actually decent:

Festival Day2

Day 2 was the lesser day, 0 trance and I was not quite sure what to go see:

the hardstyle stage was a bit rough and difficult for me to enjoy for hours

Went to see another stage that had hippie music (Woodstock) but switched a bit for Laura Van Dam

Spent the rest of the day at the used to be mainstage, now 2nd biggest stage. Music was uninspiring but better than nothing:

There were lots of smaller stages but it was hard to know what they were all playing without walking a lot back and forth:

By then I should have stayed until the end for the fireworks, but the music was uninspiring and I had an early flight out the next day. Turns out the fireworks (and drone) show was actually quite good and would have been nice to see, but it was a long wait, so I watched it from my hotel room:

video summary:

The grounds

I heard it was hard to get in and out, but thankfully I had a hotel walking distance thanks to my dear friends who invited me, so it wasn't too bad

10mn walk through the park

arrived right on time at the VIP entrance, which really was the backstage entrance, weird...

this one I found reasonable until I saw how many bathrooms they didn't have, and how people were just pissing everywhere as a result. It's ultimately on them

the south side had some cute decords, but nothing to write home about

if you got glasses, they had a recycling system that felt ok enough

plenty of food options, but they didn't accept legal tender, just play fake plastic breakable money

nice, but very uphill

I did mention a freeway cutting a festival in 2, true story:

There was camping, but they also had a small higher class village attached to the festival, like tomorrowland. Nice village:

They had one ride, and you got to ride once for free with VIP tickets:

campsite was reasonably big

Thoughts/Conclusions

So, how did it go, what did I think? First, I wanted to like Mysteryland, especially after I found out that it was what Tomorrowland was based on, and it looked like a more nicely sized and manageable tomorrowland. In some ways, it was, but let's also be honest that getting in and out was apparently very tricky for people who had to do so, and if you relied on uber, you were going to have a tough time as there were not enough of them. In my case though, thanks to some lovely friends, I stayed at an airport hotel that was walking distance from the festival, so it was a 15mn walk which was quite manageable.
This year was, according to my friends, special, and not in a good way:

the footprint was smaller, so it was more crowded

some magical experiences and decors were missing

mainstage was moved, the new location seemed ok to me but was honestly hard to get in and out of, steep uphill, and the VIP area was even more tricky to get to, not a win

the severe lack of bathrooms was quite frankly hard to excuse

there was 0 wifi, not even at mainstage VIP, and there was no cell phone service either. This is quite bad if you can't find your friends anymore and phones don't work :( After excellent cell phone service at Nature One where they had extra cell phone towers just for that, and flawless cellphone service at Hadra Trance festival in the middle of nowhere, France, it's hard to excuse

fake plastic money, do I even need to rant about this again? Oh, and those tokens could be cut in half to pay half tokens since if you're going to have a stupid useless festival currency, might as well make it complicated and give you change in half plastic tokens with sharp pointy edges. Read more on fake festival money and why you should boycott it, here

the VIP amenities, felt limited, especially for the VIP platform for mainstage that was very hard to find and quite hard to reach

What I did like:

despite the apparent/obvious cost savings, it still had a remnant of magical village feel from tomorrowland, its successor. That was nice.

although some places were crowded and it was hard to get around at times, it was not tomorrowland crowded

the food options were good, although they did not take legal currency in any way, so they were useless to me

security, especially in the VIP entrance, were super chill. That was very much appreciated.

there was real free water, but not really, you had to buy a plastic refillable pouch, the same one from parookaville that broke, leaked and destroyed my laptop a few weeks after the festival, and you could only pay with 2 fake money tokens, which was 8 euros. After that, you could refill for free. It's not luminosity bad, but it's not great either. On the plus side, I think you could refill whatever container for free by the toilets, and they did not prevent you from bringing your own empty water containers

water was not really free, it was 8 euros one time cost, free refills

the fake plastic play money, which can be cut in 2

a big more thorough search in GA, VIP was super chill

I was going to say that tokens were complete bullshit since you were forced to buy them with a credit card anyway, but the entrance did let you pay for them with cash. I will let you decide how many people in Holland do not have credit cards or pay by phone:

Now, things get a bit nebulous, but I heard that because the organisers were retiring, they had an incentive to maximize their profit this year, at the expense of the festival itself, not good :-/
Of course, given new organizers in 2 years (and festival cancelled nest year), it's kind of hard to say how it will be.

In a nutshell, I'm happy to have been able to see this very long running festival, and thankful to my friends who helped organize the hotel. The festival itself was ok, but indeed it was not one of its best years. Music-wise it at least had one day of mostly trance (versus potentially 0 for tomorrowland if you pick the wrong week), but the 2nd day, it didn't have much music that I enjoyed, despite many stages. Maybe I didn't find it, or it wasn't there.
I guess let's see how the future edition is, but given that it's been at the same time than burning man, it's been difficult for me to go in the past, and let's see how it becomes in the future with the new owners.
Is it worth flying across the world, for? I'd say no.
Is it a decent, cheaper, easier alternative to tomorrowland? Sure, why not.

Links

google photos pictures

video summary: https://youtu.be/dsMo0LF1mmA

summary of instagram videos: https://youtu.be/VyNPEnewKb8

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2025/08/16 Syd Gris/OT, Blastoyz, and Infected Mushroom at Midway, SF

π 2025-08-16 01:01 in Clubbing

After having been away for 3 festivals in Europe, glad to be back:

Syd Gris opened for us

Great to see Blastoyz next:

Then it was time for Infected Mushdroom with an energized live set, followed by DJ Set:

Great to catch up with friends, as always:

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2025/08/14 Tiesto Back To Trance After 20 Years

π 2025-08-14 01:01 in Clubbing

This is a post I made in May 2025, right after Tiesto closed EDC with a wonderful In Search of Sunrise set. It was meant as half a joke, but half being hopeful that maybe it wouldn't be a joke, afterall:

End of EDC Day 3 with Trance until Sunrise, couldn't believe it

I just figured it out:

1) step one, become the #1 DJ in the world by playing trance, do sold out 12h Tiesto in Concert concerts broadcast around the world back when it was barely possible to do so (pre-youtube), with live performers, acrobats and all

2) become even more #1 DJ in the world
3) a few years later, fall off the face of the planet, then come back as an evil twin that plays sushi from japan and other crap for 20 years
4) after those 20 years, disappear the evil twin, come back to EDC 2025 as if nothing happened, play a beautiful in search of sunrise trance set
5) absolutely pack EDC's Kinetic Fields, in a way that it's never been that full on the last hour and last night of the festival, with people standing outside and not able to get in but listening from a distance
6) as bonus, play lots of tracks that are 20+ years old that all the EDC kids have never heard and think are all hot and new
7) all your original trance lover fans, despite the 20 years of wait and disappointment, forgive you
8) bring back trance to the top of the world as the top new genre.
9) become #1 DJ in the world again

10) profit!