This year's BangOn! Elements Music and Arts Festival was pretty killer.
The thing that sealed the deal for me wasn't just the plethora of awesome DJ's and wild performances of all kinds happening all around the venue. What sealed the deal for me was that it was also a great venue for just chillin'.
Don't get me wrong, mostly everyone there was turning up all day and through the last shows, but an undervalued aspect of any festival are the spaces designated for just sitting back and hanging out if you didn't feel like raging in the hot sun for a bit.
There were some weirdly cool post-industrial indoor spaces to kick it in, a bounce house, and even a nice cuddle puddle type deal outfitted with pillows and nice curtains to shade you from the sun. Mucho relaxo.
It was a great place to recharge your batteries before the next set, or just stare into the sky and try to tickle some non-existent particles that only you could see.
What also captured my attention was the close proximity of the stages to one another. Normally, this would be an issue - something I'm not into. But the venue was so unique, and each stage was nestled in its own little area so nicely, that the square footage wasn't an issue.
If anything, it made the event better because no matter where you went, you were rubbing elbows with someone cool. The only practical issue could have been the sound from one stage bleeding into the another.
This wasn't a problem at Elements. In fact, the only time I can remember distinctly hearing two stages at once clearly was during the last sets, when Simon Posford's Shpongle DJ set at the Earth stage syncopated with Eduardo Castillo's set at the Water stage.
From my vantage point atop a big blue party bus at the Water stage, we could hear Posford's vibe blending with Castillo's, which, truthfully, was really unexpected and wicked cool.
Let's not forget the BMX performers. These mad men were pulling off flips and all sorts of other cool tricks from platforms and ramps built on and around shipping containers with some kind of scary pyrotechnics.
If you looked towards the sky, chances were you saw some fireballs surrounding a BMXer doing something awesome, apparently in zero gravity.
liveforlivemusic #Shpongle 🌀 at #elementsfestival by #bangonnyc was incredible! 📷 by Tiffany Rexach | Full Gallery on L4LM.com #LiveForLiveMusic
There were also some death-defying aerial dancers who rappelled off the tower of the South Red Hook Grain Elevator and did their dirt from the side of said tower. Nasty.
But for me, and I think probably many others, the best part of the event was the final set at the Earth stage. It was a whimsical mashup of projection mapping, fire dancing, and Shpongle.
RhizomeNYC designed the massive head sculpture atop the stage, which by nightfall was spandexed in swirling images curated by their very talented VJ's. Just as cool, they also utilized the whole face of the adjacent grain elevator building to project some trippy visuals.
On top of that, Hoopsie Daisies threw down some killer fire dancing all day long. With the combination of fire dancing plus projection mapping all around, the experience at Simon Posford's set was above and beyond the rest.
BangOn! parties have been killin' it for years around NYC and by the looks of it, things are just getting better. Here's to looking forward to the next one!
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