White collar adults in polo shirts watched in horror from the patio of 81Bay Brewing as millennials in pashminas and various festival accoutrement descended on the plaza. Pattinis' mural-ed entrance served as a sort of portal to the whimsical realm that lay inside. What was typically a skate rink/restaurant/bar, had been transformed into a full-on main stage and dance area.
After checking in at the counter where skates are normally rented out, you enter immediately into the arcade section of the venue. At any time of the night, most of the non-ticket winning games were occupied by patrons of the show in need of bright light and physical stimulation. Saturday night saw a festival-sponsored air hockey tournament where the winner would win a free ticket to this year’s Suwannee Hulaween.
Further down the rabbit hole, vendors lined the walls adjacent to the skating rink all the way down to the bar in the back. There they sold and traded artwork, enamel pins, heady knick knacks, and custom festival attire. One vendor, Reclaim Threads, sold surprisingly fashionable festival clothing made out of manipulated and repurposed finds from thrift stores. Other vendors sold and demonstrated things like those giant triangle kaleidoscopes you see in videos on Facebook.
In between the arcade and the counter for ordering from the kitchen was a massage table offering free 15 minute massages that ended with a professional strength buffer being run on your back to shake the tension away.
Outside on the smoking patio, people sat on the concrete and chain smoked cigarettes while listening to music being played off the King Of Chill bus parked in the fenced in area. Attendees could buy two channel silent disco headphones to listen to two silent DJs that were broadcasting from outside. Headphones were $5 so not everyone had them, but for the select few that did they got to experience two secret acts that the rest of the festival was not privy to.
The workshop room was behind the arcade and featured a large variety of workshops in a small space. Workshops included herbalism, numerology, blacklight ecstatic yoga, acro yoga, etc. It was a truly intimate space with some wild fractal animation playing from a projector on a wall.
Speaking of wild animations, the “second stage,” or officially the Celestial Chaya Lounge, featured its own lineup of smaller DJs and a projector that played insane visuals on the ceiling and all three walls behind the DJ. All the visuals and art in the Chaya Lounge were done by the phenomenal spray paint/acrylic artist Chaya Av.
Harmonic Dream Gathering had one of the most impressive live art sections I’ve seen at any festival, even the huge festivals that have mural mazes painted throughout the weekend. The website lists 22 visual artists for the festival, pretty much all live painters. Live painters lined the back of the rink and were even scattered throughout both the vending area and in front of the massage table. Each painter had their own unique and psychedelic style and they would even walk over to each others' paintings to add their own touches here and there. Besides just painters, some of the most talented fire artists from the southeast were there spinning every fire prop imaginable, both inside the venue on stage and outside in the smoking area.
Since the festival was officially the Harmonic Dream Full Moon Gathering, the main stage featured a full moon in the middle that was video mapped for visuals, along with the rest of the stage. In front of the DJ booth was a flat area of the stage for fire performers and dancers. With the entire dance floor and stage being housed within the rink part of the venue, it got pretty stuffy when everyone began crowding together for the bigger acts later in the night. This is where the 5-6 foot tall space coolers came in clutch. Crowds gathered around the large white boxes scattered sporadically throughout the venue to fan off and cool down.
Friday night’s music lineup was a little heavier on the bass and grime than Saturday. With Andrelian, Bogtrotter, and Minnesota headlining, it was bound to be a weird and loud night full of head banging and loud noises. Minnesota closed out the night with 90-minute set that had everyone inside and dancing, and not just because they closed the outdoor smoking area at 1 a.m. due to noise complaints.
Saturday was my favorite of the two lineups. The acts featured were a lot groovier and glitchy with IKUMA, Mystic Grizzly, Goobsteppa, Hullabaloo, and Jade Cicada headlining. Mystic Grizzly from Ft. Lauderdale did an incredible and completely original set that honestly stole the show from some of the night's other headliners. But if you haven’t heard of Hullabaloo, go to his SoundCloud right now and listen to his "Tipper and Friends Promo Mix". There is nothing like it. He uses almost tribal beats mixed with a sort of highly dynamic glitch hop to make some of the most insane music I’ve ever heard. The best descriptor I can think of to define his music is simply “hullabaloo.” His set was insane. And while I’m a fan of Jade Cicada — who performed a fantastic set — he was the only DJ of the night to not let fire performers perform on the stage and also forbid photographers from taking pictures of him behind the set like literally every other DJ did. Maybe he wants the music to speak for himself, maybe he’s kind of an asshole. Either way it was a great night with incredible music.
The festival was brought to us by the Headbang Society, The Harmonic Connection, Dream Garden, Flowering Flow, Bassclouds, Post Future Massive Ideas, and Fractal Beach. The Headbang Society (HBS) is Florida’s newest up and coming production company. What began in 2016 as a satirical social media group to share memes about EDM, they grew and grew and began curating shows earlier this year with bass music acts like Digital Ethos, Toadface, and The Widdler.
In a phone interview with Headbang Society cofounder Segovia Carlos, he said, "At every show we do we definitely want to give that feeling, at least to a certain degree, that you get when you attend a classic music and arts festival." With most of their shows being in Tampa this year, together with their partnering companies, they brought something pure to the local EDM scene that was heavily lacking before. Yeah Beach Bar and The Ritz get some big names, but the atmosphere at those venues is corporate and bland. At Headbang Society shows, you aren’t going to pay $5 for a water and have gargantuan bouncers watching over your every move. Their shows are full of art and aren't aggressively trying to milk you for every dollar you have, which honestly draws a much better crowd than the people you’ll find waiting in line at The Ritz. There was a small problem Friday with a rapper who wasn’t on the bill sexually harassing multiple women, grabbing their asses and making them uncomfortable, but the good people from the festival stepped in and ejected him from the venue, continuing to maintain a safe place to dance for all.
See more photos below and check out a full gallery on FestivalFolks.com.
