Electric Naked Chemiluminescence 2010

This year’s Electric Daisy Carnival was precisely what you might expect for the biggest electronica event in the nation: 150,000 neon-and-lingerie-clad partygoers, all pupils and pacifiers, crammed together in Los Angeles to watch 70-plus acts nn-tiss their asses off across five stages.

The event featured sets from Moby, Deadmau5, Benny Benassi, Groove Armada, Will.i.am (a.total.asshole), Armin Van Buuren, Dieselboy, Kaskade and Infected Mushroom, among 70 others. If you don’t know what they look like, well, tough shit, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to fill this page with pics of dudes in headphones looking at turntables & computers.

Instead, we’ve got a gallery spectacle of what everyone was seeing when they weren’t trying to make out a head onstage atop the turntable riser or having some asshole wave his glowstick fingers in their face. To feel the spirit, take the red pill and push play as you scroll through the half-naked girls and ludicrous costumes.

The artist sets themselves varied between “Oh shit nice sample dude just threw in the nn-tiss mix” and “Seriously this is horrible get me the fuck out of here nn-tiss“. Highlights were Moby, Deadmau5 and nudity, while the chief lowlight goes to Will.i.am, who quite simply sucked – and we’re talking about a festival celebrating music which key feature is repetitive beats on a seemingly endless loop. He was worse than that, but brought the eye candy in full force.

Travis Barker, who’s just about goddamn everywhere these days, played an impressive live set with A-Trak, while Lil’ Jon stayed long on his Laidback Luke appearance to introduce Benny Benassi – who was received with wild enthusiasm by the crowd. Nearly as wild as that for DeadMau5, who crushed the capacity crowd on the main stage with a set that varied wildly between nn-tiss and nn-nn-tiss.

The tone of the festival was a grimy kind of celebration, costumed freaks and candyflipping twentysomethings making casual comforts of whatever they could find in their tripping delirium. While some have called it “Coachella in the city,” the title is genuinely unappealing when one considers that the key selling point of Coachella is the vast expanses of lush, green polo field and plenty of space for roaming. By contrast, EDC was crammed into an intensely urban area, located squarely in one of the most crime-ridden and poorly maintained parts of Los Angeles.

While Day One was a very peaceful affair for the most part, the cops had turned vicious by the onset of Day Two, arresting nearly a hundred attendees and marching – batons drawn – against the crowd to drive them down the street. Once attendees hit the center point of the festival grounds, however, most was forgotten in a hallucinogenic haze.

Until the revelers got out of the venue and back to their cars, that is. Smashed windows, jacked possessions and auto theft was rampant throughout the night – a no-brainer result of hosting a raver Super Bowl in the middle of one of the most dangerous areas in the entire country. But to most among the jaw-grinding masses, the benefits outweighed the risk – at least until the comedown.