With over 60 artists and 25+ events spanning the course of five days and multiple venues, Seasons Festival returns to Vancouver for it’s 6th year. The city-wide festival aims to highlight Vancouver as both a center for emerging talent, as well as provide a stage for global acts. Bringing together some of the best talent from art, technology and music, Seasons Festival has always been a great way for us to kick our winter blues. For five days we celebrated the great community that’s ever evolving in Vancouver and discovered all it has to offer. The folks at Blueprint Events once again showed how it’s home town should be recognized as a hub for music culture in the Pacific Northwest, as world.
Kicking off our Seasons 2017 we were fortunate enough to attend an industry panel at the Monster Cat Headquarters. The night would consist of two separate presentations about growth of brands, musicians, and labels, both globally and locally. There were personal accounts from speakers like Monstercat CEO, Mike Darlington, Derek Duncan of Pacific Rhythm, and Fortune Sound Club’s Jason Sulyma. The night was plenty insightful on the growth of Vancouver as an emerging music culture hub. To cap the night off we were presented with a keynote from Bass Coast’s Co-Organizer, Andrea Grahamn about the history of Bass Coast.
Andrea Grahamn (The Librarian) tells us how Bass Coast grew from its humble beginning in Squamish, BC to it’s new home in Merritt.
With a DJ set from none other than Madeon at Blueprint’s flagship venue, Celebrities, we couldn’t have asked for a better opening musical performance. Having just come through the PNW on tour with Porter Robinson, it was a pleasure to have the 22 year old producer return. With such a great start to our week, we couldn’t have been more excited for Thursday night and another addition of the Monstercat Showcase. The Vancouver based record label once again took over Celebrities to show the best of upcoming artists. With a headlining performance from HAYWYRE, the night was full of live musical performances…and plenty of dancing.
The party wasn’t reserved to just Celebrities however; the venue’s newly opened underground space Hybridity Music was showcasing the best of both art and music.What felt like a nod to the underground rave community of the scenes earlier years, the space was a great place to explore new talents (to us at least). With performances from Sabota, Wet Paint, Lorne B, and a mixture of art media we couldn’t help but explore all that was offered. The night was certainly a great mixture of new sounds and DMNW favorites both above and underground and a great 2nd night of Seasons 2017.
No Seasons Festival would be complete without 2 back-to-back nights of headliners at the Pacific Coliseum. With headlining acts from Above & Beyond, Excision, Galantis, Illenium and much more, we’d been anticipating the main events since December, when we caught the lineup. With nearly 20 years of hosting some of the best events across the city, Seasons would be just another notch in the belt. Blueprint once again took no shortcuts when it came to production and brought plenty of lights…and lasers, sweet lasers.
Night one’s main event had no shortage of bass and when we arrived, things had already been turned up to 11. A last minute change to the lineup saw a Metro Boomin replacement with Boombox Cartel as a welcomed surprise. The duo brought their LA brand of trap, dubstep, and all things bass to the crowd to really kick the night into high gear. Rounding out the middle of the night would bring to the stage one of DMNW’s favorites. With his melodic take on heavy bass, Illenium gave the crowd a live performance that had us missing the sunny days of Paradiso. With the recent announcement that the Colorado native would be joining us later for Shambhala, we couldn’t have been more excited to see him back in the PNW again soon.
Important things happen in Pacific Northwest nightlife, and DMNW will send you alerts!
