“It’s Not A Rave”

The Burning Man Organization appear to have well and truly jumped the shark…perhaps for the last time. In their desperation for ticket sales, they have specifically requested sound camps to publish their lineups early.

This is ironic because doof doof electronic music has been a staple of Burning Man since its earliest days in the desert, as DJ Terbo Ted outlined for us in his epic guest post The Techno Ghetto – The History of Dance Music at Burning Man. And yet the Org have always fought hard against it – an exemplary example would be the Battle of Dancetronauts as told in Too Loud For Burning Man Parts 1, 2 and 3.

Hat tip to #NOTaDJ Itai, a star of the Tulum scene, for sharing this in true Burner spirit:

Source: Itai Music, Instagram

The missing part of the Org’s email:

We can tell this is legit because Carl Cox’s camp Playground would not do anything without the Org’s blessing, and they just posted their (dope) lineup:

It’s all about the Insta these days, Burners. Tag your friends and the Org. Burning Man have 1.5 million followers on Instagram and 157,000 on Twitter – where they haven’t posted for a year, despite Billionaire Burner Elon Musk being one of their most loyal and ardent supporters, famously saying “Burning Man IS Silicon Valley”.

My how times have changed. Here we have a checkmarked Burning Man account using DJ Tiesto’s name to promote walk-in sales in Reno:

Is it just me, or does it seem like they are really trying very, very hard to move these tickets?

Is this related to the rumblings we’ve been hearing of regime change on the horizon?

Spanky’s, a staple of Burning Man over man decades, are looking to unload 14 tickets below face value. Usually a couple of weeks away from the Burn, everyone would be scrambling to get tickets. I can’t think of a precedent for this.

Victory for Ravers! White Ocean Lineup Announced

Earthcore at St Kilda Festival, Melbourne, Australia, 2004

Earthcore at St Kilda Festival, Melbourne, Australia, 2004. Click to experience.

Oakey’s back to the burn! One of my favorite DJs ever, especially since I spied him rocking away on the dance floor as a civilian to someone else’s set at the Earthcore stage at Melbourne’s St Kilda Festival. A long, long time ago. Whatever happened to DJs that dance?

Seeing Paul Oakenfold playing for 8 hours to a nearly empty Stonehenge in 2004 was one of my best Burning Man moments of all time. Last year he was involved with new mega sound camp White Ocean, and they brought trance back to the burn. FINALLY! Astrix and Simon Patterson rocked it to massive crowds. This year promises to be even better. Quite possibly THE best collection of artists to ever perform at one camp at Burning Man. And it’s all gifted to you for free!

This year’s White Ocean line-up is so good I had to double-check that I wasn’t reading The Onion. Dave Seaman (aka GOD). Hernan Cattaneo & Nick Warren. Seb Fontaine. Plump DJ’s. Astrix, Above and Beyond, Markus Schulz, Sander van Doorn. JUNO REACTOR. I repeat: JUNO REACTOR. Run, don’t walk, to their gig: my favorite band in the world. Live psy, it is a show like no other. Think Shpongle meets Infected Mushroom meets Lucent Dossier Experience.

Try dancing to that shit for 6 hours straight and you’ll know what I mean.

Cartoon-of-Justin-BieberOMG OMG OMG! If I was 30 years younger, this would be like Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus just fucked and spawned a twerking baby Kardashian. This is the dance music equivalent of Germany’s performance in Brazil today. GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!

Yes, it’s safe to say that I’m excited by this news. And also devastated, since I won’t be attending Burning Man this year. Somebody please Soundcloud these sets, or even better, stream them live.

The White Nights at 10 o’clock and Cinammon are broken up based on music styles:

DJ Paul Oakenfold at the Green Man, Burning Man 2007

DJ Paul Oakenfold at the Green Man, Burning Man 2007

Monday – Eclectic

Tuesday – Progressive

Wednesday – Trance

Thursday – House

Friday – Psy

Saturday – Heck no, it’s Techno

Here’s the full lineup:

white-ocean-burning-man-2014-lineup

 

Here’s what EDM blog LessThan3 had to say:

Burning Man isn’t about lineups. You don’t go there just to see your favorite artists. However, music is still a huge part of the annual 60,000 person art experiment. Everywhere you go at night at Black Rock City, you’ll see DJs spinning on art cars, in nightclubs, and massive festival-style stages on the playa. 

Today we found out that the rumors were true about the epic lineup for the White Ocean sound camp events, curated by Paul Oakenfold and Timur Sardarov. Each day will be dedicated to a different genre of electronic music, with some serious talent to boot. Some of the most surprising names to see include Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz, Sander van Doorn, Chris Liebing, Astrix, and Fehrplay. 

Additionally, White Ocean posted a photo on their Facebook page of the stage design they are building, which looks to be fully equipped with massive flamethrowers and pyrotechnics. We’ll see you there! 

white-ocean-stage-flamethrowerswhite ocean under construction

Listen up, kiddies. You can take all your Aoki/Mau5y/Guetto/Calvins with their gimmicks and USB sticks and shove them up your nostrils. This is proper fucking doof doof right here.

Seriously people. Juno Reactor. Watch their amazing 2007 live performance in Tokyo, featuring Steve Stevens on guitar, in the video below. Thankyou Oakey! Let’s hope they develop a massive following on the West Coast as a result of this, so they have to come back here and play all the time.