Albeit Rainstorms and Mud, Moonrise Still Delivers One Hell of a Festival [Event Review]

Moonrise Festival returned to Pimlico Race Track this year for its fifth year in Baltimore. The famed horse track was transformed into a festival paradise equipped with four stages that covered the entirety of the grounds. Two mainstages, Stellar and Lunar towered on opposite ends of the festival which eliminated all possibility of sound bleed. The neatly designed Stellar Stage was probably our favorite of the mainstages with its eccentric look. The final two stages were the Solar Dance Tent and the Celestial Garden Stage. The tent mainly catered towards bass acts with artists like Flux Pavilion, Party Thieves, JOYRYDE, Slander, and Zomboy delivering ear crushing performances. Celestial leaned more in the techno and tech house region hosting performances from Malaa, Shiba San, Will Clarke, Kill Frenzy, and Goldfish to name a few. Across from the stages lied the delicious food and drink vendors that proved to satisfy all cravings. Lines at the vendors were generally manageable and never more than a few minutes wait. Now, on to the performances! Following suit with previous years, Moonrise brought in a diverse mix of artists with acts like Gramatik, Madeon, Rezz, Slander, Lee Foss, Will Clarke, Ookay, Ganja White Night, Carnage, Porter Robinson, Malaa, Excision, Big Gigantic, and Kaskade all performing (well, mostly).

We kicked Saturday off with an ear warming techno performance from Will Clarke that flew by all too fast. Goldfish began setting up their live performance just as Clarke was wrapping up his sixty minute set. However, a small stroll over to Stellar quickly landed us full force in Morgan Page’s set. It was undoubtedly a change of pace as his performance mainly consisted of house with a touch of trance thrown in. Page wrapped up at around 5:30 and we indulged in a mouthwatering buffalo chicken wrap that I still dream about to this day. It wasn’t long after this that we noticed the skies darkening and the wind rapidly picking up. Soon enough an announcement was made that the festival was being evacuated and thousands of attendees were cattled into the grand stands that are normally used for the horse races. A torrential downpour rocked the festival for hours and it unclear if this would be the end of Moonrise day one.

After scouring Twitter, we stumbled across a tweet from Carnage that stated the festival would reopen at 9:05 PM, and that it did. After ascertaining a small cut on the forehead while attempting to reenter the festival, we were back inside the misty and muddy Moonrise. Some schedule changes landed Rezz performing at Celestial stage for about an hour. Her dark, grimy style was the perfect post-storm setting for Moonrise to indulge in. Last but not least, Seven Lions closed out the tent with a performance that was oddly different from his usual style. A mix of house, hardstyle, dubstep, and trance composed of his sixty minute set and left us craving his old style as opposed to this foreign sounding performance.

Thankfully, day two went without a hiccup and we kicked off by catching a bit of JOYRYDE who delivered his signature bass house that had the tent exploding with energy. Another change of pace landed us at Markus Schulz who threw down progressive trance set that had us to the moon for its entirety. Next up was Alan Walker at Stellar delivering a standard progressive house performance that was nice to relax at while while mingling with attendees. Time seemingly flew by and before we realized it Porter Robinson was up at the Lunar Stage to put forth a set that we knew would be emotional. As always, Porter went above and beyond dropping tracks from his Worlds album. In addition he would thrown down tracks like “Easy”, “Shelter”, “Language”, “Sad Machine”, and his remix of Nero’s “The Thrill” which is a personal favorite.

Rather than head to Pretty Lights or Dillstradamus, we opted to close out Moonrise with none other than Malaa. The mysterious producer dropped the majority of tracks from his Illicit EP and proved to be the perfecting ending to Moonrise. Despite the rain delays and mud throughout the weekend, there was nothing more relaxing than hanging with friends and watching Malaa smoothly smoke cigarettes as he controlled the crowd from atop the stage. Until next year, Moonrise.

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