Music Festival Review: Insomniac's White Wonderland 2012

     Another great New Years Eve made possible by EDM.  Insomniac's White Wonderland was full of huge Top 10 DJ names including Hardwell, Avicii, Dash Berlin, and Above & Beyond.  The Anaheim Convention Center was an awesome venue, allowing more than enough room to "catch a breather", while housing music goers from the cold weather.  The all white everything theme was pretty cool too but if you took your eyes off your friends for more than 5 seconds you'd probably lose them.  Any type of headgear was money as a totem, not to be racist but tall black friends too.  By the way, what was up with the dude’s bathroom lines? I heard people wait for 2 hours to go.  I had an incredible time at WW, here's how it went.

     The night started off at the Sheraton hotel right across the street from the venue.  We pregamed till around 7:00p while we waited for some other friends in our group to arrive.  We wanted to see Hardwell so we rushed to the venue and skipped the line outside.  The lines went by pretty quickly, I think we waited 45 minutes at the most.  Everything went smoothly, nothing went wrong.  We got in 5 minutes after Hardwell started his set but everyone had to get/go to the bathroom/water/booze, you know.  This gave me a chance to check out the venue.  There were 2 stages, divided by a "chill" area where you could sit, buy merchandise, food, etc.  At the front of this area was an owl statue, perfect for a meet up spot.  The walls were filled with snowflakes and White Wonderland projections, the ceilings with white illuminating spheres and spikes.  Once our group was ready we migrated to Hardwell.

     Hardwell's set was great! He played a lot of his own productions like "Elements", "Spaceman", "How We Do", and "Zero 76" but I was surprised he didn't play "Apollo" unless he did and I just don't remember.  It was classic Hardwell, which I love.  He threw down some curve balls though.  I'm pretty sure he was the only one that threw down Knife Party and damn it, I love me some Knife Party!  Overall, it felt...rather mainstream if you ask me.  He also threw down "Pursuit of Happiness (Steve Aoki Remix)" which was a huge surprise.  I loved the song 3-4 years ago but it seemed WAY mainstream of him to throw that in there.  It doesn't seem like his style to me but I still enjoyed it.

     Avicii's set was awesome, I haven't seen him in a while.  Some of the tracks played include "NickTim", "Two Million", "Silhouettes", "My Feelings For You", "Penguins", and of course "Levels".  It was a GREAT show.  Now here's my problem with Avicii or rather Avicii's audience.  He's produced so many great songs since "Levels" blew up but those tracks seem to get over looked or over shadowed by "Levels".  Which leads me to think, WHEN THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE GOING TO GET OVER LEVELS?!  I've heard the instrumentals in car commercials, Flo-Rida remixed it, and I hear it in sports arenas during basketball games.  Aren't people over it yet?  I think it's beyond played out.  I think he needs to drop "Levels" from his set, I've heard it too many times in too many places.  It's time to move on to a different...level.

     Madeon. The kid looks like he's 10, which is appropriate because I'm giving him a 10/10 for his performance.  He played, "The City", "Finale", and my favorite, "Easy" by Porter Robinson & Mat Zo.  The dude’s set was epic.  Maybe I'm just giving him a 10/10 because he played, "Easy" cause I just wanted to hear that song and he played it. #stoked.  Anyways Madeon has consistently performed well; he's always impressed me.  However, my mind wasn't blown by his performance.  It was great but it wasn't fuckin' amazing.

     Bingo Players killed it.  The Players threw down the hardest out of the 6 artists that I saw that night.  They were also given the count down spot, which was a great choice.  Their tracks, "Rattle", "L'Amour", and "Cry" made the crowd go nuts! I fuckin' loved the energy of the crowd when The Players took over the stage.  I think they played "Atom" by Nari and Milani or "Hells Bells" by Albin Myers too, those songs have The Players written all over it so I'm stoked they threw them down.  This was my favorite set of the night and the crowd seemed to agree.  See them if you can, they were great. They go hard.

     Sebastian Ingrosso was typical Sebastian Ingrosoo.  He played "ID", "Calling, and "Save The World" which he ALWAYS throws down.  His overall set was good though but once again nothing special.  Maybe I've seen him too many times and I just sort of already know what he's going to play which decreases the surprise factor of songs but it was still GOOD music nonetheless.  He's still dope as fuck and I can't wait to see how the amazing producer will pan out after The Mafia disperses.  

     Above & Beyond was pretty sick.  I don't like their style as much as The Players but that’s because A&B are pretty mellow.  I can't recall any songs they played but it was entertaining.  I guess it wouldn't be appropriate to judge them since I didn't see the majority of their set. So I'll just leave it at that.

     White Wonderland was a great experience but there were some things that messed it up.  Like I said earlier the lines for the bathrooms were HUGE for the men with the females pretty short.  I couldn't understand it, I still don't but we missed some awesome songs cause of that of the lines.  I hate when I hear a raging song while I'm on the move.  There was also a point when security blocked off The Hallow Cathedral stage for no apparent reason, a lot of people were pretty pissed off about that because they couldn't get to the Bingo Players and because they got separated from their friends.  Finally, I HATED the jib on the left side of each stage.  HATED it.  I totally understand Insomniac's reasoning behind it, to produced a badass promotion video, but shit that camera was there the whole time obscructing my view.  At one point some people pulled it down and I wish they had pulled it down all the way.  This particular festival felt VERY mainstream, I can't really put my finger on why but I guess there are just some things you can't explain.  It's probably because EDM is going mainstream.  Besides that, EVERYTHING was GREAT! 

I'll score this festivals based on 4 categories: venue, average performance, crowd energy, and overall experience.
Venue: 8
Average performance: 8
Crowd energy: 8.5
Overall experience: 8

In other words, I had a great time.  I'd like to add that if this weren’t NYE, I'd probably knock the overall experience .5 points because that NYE atmosphere definitely made the energy better.

Here's how I ranked the performances:

#1: Bingo Players

#2: Madeon

#3: Hardwell

#4: Sebastian Ingrosso

#5: Avicii

Here's a clip of Sebastian Ingrosso dropping "Calling":