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View Full Version : Share Your VELD Experience And Review With Us! :) (Need It For Work)



Tektonix
08-05-2012, 11:43 PM
Okay so Illict is asking to gather up some reviews and such for VELD! I know allot of you guys went soooo, Share your favourite set's, worst set's, what you did and didnt like, how you think it could have been improved ect... Help me out guys :)

You can use the format below if you want but dont have to, those are just the main points we are looking for :)

First Impressions: Holly Fuck....It was MASSIVE. Getting in the gate and getting there was quick and painless. The main stage looked amazing, it was HUGE and the bacardi tent looked nice too. Nice array of food in the food area and some cool stalls to buy shit from, It all had a great looking layout.Right off the bat it looked awesome and i could not wait for the rest of the weekend to unfold :)

What I Liked: The Bacardi Tent!!! The sound in there was AMAZING, Chest pounding throughout the tent. The artist's in there ESPECIALLY Day 2's where phenomenal. I spent almost 80% of my time in there. I also enjoyed the free Dr Pepper ;) OH AND THE "MAN BURGER"

What I Disliked: The water station was a big one for me, They had 1 station, and it was just a killzone to use it, I ended up just paying for a water bottle instead as it just wasnt worth it to go battle it out for a refill. I also didnt like that they take your bottle caps(?) not sure why they do that :lol: There was also a lot of leakage from the stages to one another during breakdowns of tracks you hear pounding bass from the other side of the festival from another stage.

3 Favourite Artist's: Kill The Noise, He brought an AMAZING set, was very crowd friendly and just a great time. Cosmic Gate, KILLED it. Was amazing to see them live again, the crowd was mental for them. The one artist who stood out for me though was Ben Gold....His set was just awesome he played ch00n after ch00n and did a great progression from 130-140bpm, Crowd was so pumped for him too. I also gained alot of respect for him, Managed to get backstage with my mate matt who was doing media and met with him....We spent a good hour or so just chatting and he was extremely friendly, humble, nice and funny. We talked about anything and everything...even chicken tenders. Just an awesome guy, so honoured to meet him.

3 Artists I Disliked: Steve Angello, Steve Aoki and ???? I liked everyone but those two.....I just found them very very boring and nothing special at all.

How Can We Improve? More Water Stations, More Lights, Fix the sound leaking, More Shops, A bit more variety, Day 1 was progressive at the main stage all day, dubstep in the tent. Day 2 was progressive all day again at the main stage and trance in the tent. It would have been nice to put a bit of everything on each day instead of separating it like they did.

Overall: 5 Star weekend :) I had an awesome time, amazing music, amazing people, yummy food, Oh and big up to the TTC for providing free shuttles to downsview station + free subways for us :D

What did YOU think? :)

(Based On These, A Possible 2013 VELD Will Be Determined SO HELP ME OUT)

Accretion
08-06-2012, 04:44 AM
:( Really wanted to be there.

Tektonix
08-06-2012, 05:40 PM
Pleased To Announce, Thanks To INK And A Very Successful Amazing Weekend, There WILL Be VELD 2013 :)

Buszaj
08-06-2012, 05:48 PM
First Impressions: Event was HUGE. So many people just wandering around having a blast, great environment. A true festival. I saw photos of the stage build, and once I got there, I was wondering why the hell they have two stages. A few hours in I realized that it was probably reserved for deadmau5 because of his extra gear.

What I Liked: Very quick entrance, even though the line seemed daunting at first. A fuck-ton of porto-potties. Quick ticket sales for booze. Good variety of food vendors. Water wasn't very expensive. Shuttle busses lined up at the end of the day was a sweet deal.

What I Disliked: The water situation was just a health hazard. There were a total of I think 12 taps? For 50,000 people?! The first day wasn't too bad. But the second day, that shit just got dangerous. Massive lineup for it. You can't do that when it's sweltering heat and people need to hydrate themselves. There should have been multiple water stations, along with some in the VIP. I ended up buying a few bottles on the second day. The drink ticket policy was a bit of a pain, but there weren't big lines, so it was okay. And $11 for a bacardi and coke?! Go fist yourself. The mud floor in the tent.....not cool. I ruined a very nice shirt because of this haha. Personally, I think they should have had just one massive stage instead of two. And a bigger light show please. The audio rig was also being way overdriven on mau5's set I feel. The kicks were sounding like crap. VIP was the biggest bullshit of life. Never buying VIP for any Canadian show again. I didn't even end up using it. Some couches to the far side of the stage, I'll pass.

3 Favourite Artist's: Aly & Fila saved the entire weekend for me. First day I did not have fun as it was pretty much all dubstep and electro. Not my thing. Ben Gold and Cosmic Gate tie for second. Tommy Trash really impressed me. Usually not my style, but it was just a good hard sounding set. And he looked like such a boss rocking out with the long hair haha.

3 Artists I Disliked: Steve Aoki is a fucking joke. Personally, I don't know how people rock out to his music. Sounds like shit....but that's subjective. But the man cannot DJ at all! His mixing was horrendous. If you're on that level superstardom...whatever you wanna call it, please take the time to learn how to mix so it doesn't sound like crap. It's not that hard. Gareth Emery, huge disappointment. He's changed man. He was playing more electro-house and almost dubstep. Very few trance tracks. What happened to his old sound that made him who he is? As for a third artist, I can't say one as pretty much all of the acts on the 1st day weren't my style of music.

How Can We Improve? MOAR WATER!!! Bigger light show. I agree that more variety could be added. With such a large space and hype event, I think it would be the perfect place to showcase all genres of EDM. Get some more stages going. I would like to see bigger trance acts, but I realize that it's expensive to book them, there are other good trance events that Ink puts on, and it's not as popular as the electro-house. But still, trance on the main stage would be sweet.

Overall: Even though I've written quite a bit of things that I disliked, it was a solid event. First day left me in a weird mood and I didn't go to guv. I heard that deadmau5 put on an unreal set, so sad I missed it. Footwork on the second night was legit though. Veld needs to be an annual event!!!

Buszaj
08-06-2012, 05:50 PM
pleased to announce, thanks to ink and a very successful amazing weekend, there will be veld 2013 :)

ahhh yeeeee

recess
08-06-2012, 07:55 PM
Steve Aoki is trash i had more fun watching the crowd during then his crap. Chris lake was amazing. More water stations. Ill post more later i was also pissed i couldnt use my cell phone but oh well

Phantom
08-07-2012, 01:33 PM
First Impressions: Fast and easy to get in... Too easy. I volunteered at Escapade and the security was much more thorough over there. I mean at VELD it would be so easy to smuggle anything you wanted in!! Half the people didn't search the lining of your hats, or didn't know how to properly pat down someone. You could pop something in your shoes and since there's no drug dogs (which there should be) they'd never know. I don't think there was a standard for the searching either. On day 1 the lady I got (all the gate security were *******?!) spent about 30 seconds on me and moved on. On day 2 the lady I got looked behind every card in my wallet, patted down my pocket for at least 30 seconds when there was absolutely nothing in there, not even any change. It's just kinda dumb, I mean if their security strategy was working, I shouldn't be finding people smoking tiny joints all over the place! And I even saw someone doing a line of coke off his car key :blank: I just don't think this should be acceptable.
What I Liked: The lighting was amazing, but it seemed the lighting crew only wanted to use its full potential for the headliners? Or maybe just because it was getting darker at night. There could've been more lights during the day, I know they don't show as much but I mean why not? The lighting definetely blew away Escapade though.
What I Disliked: I went to VELD with people who for some reason didn't give a shit about the Bacardi tent or small artists. Plus they wanted to spend half the damn day at the Vaughan Mills mall. So we rolled up there at like 4-6 PM each day :( I mean that's like half the money for the ticket wasted! Swanky Tunes, Chris Lake and Michael Woods are all artists I wanted to see, but I missed them all :(

About the actual event, the water stations were BS. They need to be completely re-thought. Also, were there even any non-VIP places to sit down? Like picnic tables? And people sitting along that entire hill with no specific path to get through wasn't great.

3 Favourite Artist's: Bassnectar killed it. Absolutely blew me away. I spent all day wondering why they would put Bassnectar after Nicky Romero and not the other way around. (also why would they put Mord Fustang after Swanky Tunes?) I thought going from electro house to dubstep to swedish house would be kind of random, but I learned about 5 minutes into Bassnectar's set that he was amazing and I was just being a bitch.

Steve Angello put on a performance that made the crowd really have fun, lots of bangers and hit tracks that everybody knows and loves. I wasn't very close to the stage, maybe like 40-60m away, but from where I was it looked like he didn't use headphones at all? I took some pictures with my iPhone 4S zoomed in pretty far (decently clear) and he's not wearing headphones in any of the pictures I took? Maybe I'm blind, took pictures at the wrong time? He's a great DJ so I'm pretty sure he wouldn't play a pre-made set, but then again his hands were doing an unusually large amount of stuff at times. And I remember once on those side panels it went to a video of his decks, and I remember all the decks except deck A had the volume bottomed out, for like 5 minutes :( But it sounded like a few tracks were playing? Maybe I'm just crazy. He put on a show though, just wanted to point out some stuff I noticed.

Nicky Romero was great, even though he rejected my high five... While I filmed it :lol: :teef: He definetely has what it takes to be an upcoming DJ, I think he will be extremely popular in the next few years.

Avicii was also amazing as usual. I've seen him a few times but this was his best set yet I think.

3 Artists I Disliked: deadmau5's performance seemed kinda plain and unimpressive for a headliner. His older albums like Random Album Title, For Lack of a Better Name plus At Play are kinda plain EDM that are what I would use if I was like an opening DJ for a house DJ. He played like a good chunk of his set using it though, so I was kinda disappointed. And he ended his set like 15 minutes early? :( everyone was throwing glowsticks at him and booing from where I was.

Don't get me wrong, I love Steve Aoki, especially after his DJ Mag vote Aoki ad :P, but his performance gave me a vibe like "fuck these guys aren't paying me well, I go from playing Tomorrowland last month to this? I'm a legend not an opening DJ" :D He seemed like he was kinda half-assing his performance.

And coming from someone who used to love Pendulum, I found Knife Party to be just another performance. I was expecting to be wow-ed because they're amazing producers, but I mean it was a good performance, not an amazing one I thought. Maybe I'm just being too grumpy here too. I was a little further back for them, so maybe that's why I wasn't having as good of a time? Well anyway, i still love Knife Party regardless.

How Can We Improve? Places to sit down? Maybe I didn't see them, but I couldn't find any picnic tables. I mean when I go order a slice of pizza with a bottle of water and a can of soda, they open both the drinks, and I can barely walk holding everything upright. The opening of all drinks was kinda unnecessary I thought. The lineup was great though, maybe more of a variety could be nice, but I really enjoyed almost all of the performers, even the ones I put in the bottom 3 were VERY enjoyable.
Overall: Even though I was kinda bitching for most of this post, I'd give VELD an 8/10. I had a great time, don't get me wrong, but maybe I'll go with different people next time ;) I'll definetely be at VELD 2013!

Tektonix
08-07-2012, 11:11 PM
Thanks For Taking The Time To Share Guys :)

I agree allot with whats being said, more water, places to sit, better lighting and getting rid of the half ass artists :P Definetly all stuff that could have made it better.

I agree Buszaj, Gareth was rather disapointing. At the end of the day, i was expecting a jaw dropping trance set from him to top off the amazing sets before. But he played it safe and went the progressive/electro route :( 3 trance songs? Fucking BS. I really dont like what hes becoming, i used to love him but now....meh.

Allot of people saying deadmau5 was shit aswell, i agree. I left 20mins into his set, ive seen him at the rogers center and honestly, it was like been there done that, its the same thing every time.

Allot of conspiracy with angello as he tends to play pre-mixed sets on a few occasions /: not sure about veld though. I want to say it was premixed parts to be safe mixed into one another.

Also, I WISH THE BACARDI TENT STAYED OPEN LONGER :( I love love love it in there, Even when it was music i wasnt big on, i still had a good time in there.

Next year we will be back bigger, badder and go harder than ever! :D

Squeege
08-08-2012, 08:41 AM
First Impressions:
Really easy to get in as Phantom said, although I didn't mind the light security as I'd rather get in quicker and if people want to do whatever drugs they want, it's their own decision that doesn't really bother me. To each their own, I guess. When I first walked in, I was just surprised at how good the stage layout and overall layout of the event was for a first time thing. The water station was okay for maybe the first 3 hours and then became a total mess. Definitely more than 12 taps needed next time, although I was really surprised water was only 3 bucks, rather than the usual 5 or 6 at the Guvernment. Alot of nice vendor tents and drinks were pretty easily accessible and portopotties were quick and easy to get in and out of.

3 Favourite Artists:
Avicii was definitely the star of the festival for me. Everytime he seems to come back, he's better than the last and a nice 2 hour and 15 minute set was awesome to make up for the 15 minutes that Deadmau5 shafted everyone. Avicii was also the most popular at the festival as when I turned around from the spot I was standing, all I could see was a giant host of people that was bigger than anything else I had seen that weekend.

Steve Angello was also awesome for me. He brought so much energy to the crowd and people were just having a great time singing along and dancing to his stuff. It also started raining right during the drop of SHM's new song as if it were almost an effect and people cheered and loved it.

Tommy Trash was also a really good performance that I think more people should have taken in, although it was expected that his crowd was smaller considering he went up against Angello. I managed to catch a half hour of Tommy in between Steve's set and he was just going off during that time.

3 Artists I Disliked:
Deadmau5 was the biggest disappointment and I ended up leaving his set 45 minutes early just because I figured he wasn't worth me standing in the rain listening to almost the exact same set I heard in November as the Rogers Centre. For your own hometown crowd to toss a ton of glowsticks at you and boo you says alot in my eyes.

I had alot of expectation for Knife Party going into the festival but they just really let me down. Their songs were all very similar and they just didn't have the energy that Bassnectar was radiating. Really disappointed in their performance.

Cazzette was where I ended up after deciding Knife Party just wasn't cutting it for me. Unfortunately, I went into the Cazzette tent and it wasn't much better in there at all. No energy and the performance was just really bland. I've heard a bunch of their remixes and stuff before and always thought they were decent, but I guess I was proved wrong on Saturday.

How Can We Improve?
First Off, something needs to be done about the water situation. Saturday afternoon was one of the hottest days of the year and the last thing anyone needed was to be dehydrated. Like I said, water prices weren't that bad but when water stations are advertised, you'd expect a little more effort instead of lines close to 1 hour in length. I didn't mind the hill for sitting down, but somewhere to sit and eat would have been nice. Also, call me crazy but I think it would have been nice to have a choice in headliners instead of having both of the set-up guys finish at 9 and being forced to watch just one, especially if you're not into whatever music the headliner is playing....but that's just me I guess. Other than that, can't really complain about anything else besides the early ending times of the headliners, but due to outdoor restrictions and by-laws, there's really not much we can do about that.

Overall:
I had a great time at Veld and I have to say, for a festival running for it's first time ever by a club promotion company (Ink Ent.) rather than a company with a big sponsor (Digi Dreams had Rogers and Live Nation), it was run surprisingly well.

Extra Thought
For the guys talking about Steve Angello's pre-mixed sets and what not, Steve actually temporarily lost his hearing earlier in his career and during that time learned to DJ without headphones and sometimes just prefers it that way. I know it sounds like an easy excuse, but for anyone who went to his afterparty at Guvernment on Sunday night, you could easily see Steve was definitely DJing as I saw him pretty clearly and he did a portion of it without headphones on. He also played a great set that was very different from his usual sets and his energy is just phenomenal. He was scheduled to play from 2-5am but ended up playing until 7:30am because he was just having a great time and the crowd was still around watching and loving it.

Will MaXimal
08-08-2012, 12:57 PM
Backed out of VELD at the last minuted :(


Will be going for 2013!

Squeege
08-08-2012, 02:10 PM
Backed out of VELD at the last minuted :(


Will be going for 2013!

Definitely go next year....I can only imagine it having a better line up and lay out next year too!

Tektonix
08-09-2012, 05:02 PM
I'll Try My Best To Keep You All Updated On Anything And Everything VELD 2013 So You's Can Be The First To Know :)

Planning And Development Has Already Shifted Into Gear To Bring You Nothing But The Best Next Year!

Phantom
08-17-2012, 12:33 PM
Extra Thought
For the guys talking about Steve Angello's pre-mixed sets and what not, Steve actually temporarily lost his hearing earlier in his career and during that time learned to DJ without headphones and sometimes just prefers it that way. I know it sounds like an easy excuse, but for anyone who went to his afterparty at Guvernment on Sunday night, you could easily see Steve was definitely DJing as I saw him pretty clearly and he did a portion of it without headphones on. He also played a great set that was very different from his usual sets and his energy is just phenomenal. He was scheduled to play from 2-5am but ended up playing until 7:30am because he was just having a great time and the crowd was still around watching and loving it.

Wow, I didn't know that! Well at least now I know my eyes weren't playing a trick on me. He's kinda like a Beethoven of Swedish House if you think about it that way :lol: