Last Saturday we headed to the city of San Bernardino to San Manual Amphitheater to catch Dada Life, a couple of our favorite DJs, at their new Insomniac event, Dada Land: The Voyage. If you’ve never been to San Manuel before for one of Insomniac’s previous events, you must know that it is an amazing outdoor venue with beautiful views. Insomniac planned an incredible event this time around, which was unlike any other. The Voyage included outdoor camping, a silent disco, a water park, hot air balloons, and an amazing lineup that consisted of Andyboy, AC Slater, Brillz, Madeon, Mercer, Morgan Page, Oliver Heldens, and two Dada Life performances that had every banana head dancing. As soon as we entered the venue grounds Insomniac employees were handing out Dada Life smile masks as well as limited edition Dada life ear plugs for anyone who wanted them. It immediately created a happy atmosphere with smiling face everywhere.
To start off our Voyage we began with Dada Life’s Classic DJ set, which definitely brought back so many memories from classic EDM songs. What stood out to me the most was when Dada Life dropped Daft Punk’s “Burnin” as well as Nirvana’s classic song “Breed.” It was an amazing feeling hearing those songs after so many years. Next up was Madeon, who at a very young age has amazed people from all over the world. His electrifying sets bring in so much energy into the crowd. It’s hard to believe he just turned 20 and is just starting to peak in his career. After Madeon, Parisian DJ, Mercer jumped on the decks. This was my first time catching him and his set was explosive from beginning to end. Everywhere I looked girls were getting on shoulders, jumping up and down with water being thrown in the air. It was a straight up party set, mixing in electro-house music with trap, which gave everyone a little variety. Still after two amazing sets, the night kept getting better with Morgan Page up next. One thing I did notice about Morgan Page’s style was that he hits you with great mashups and remixes while dropping very intimate tracks that the whole crowd loves to sing along to.
With only one set before it was time to go bananas, the one and only Oliver Helden’s took the stage. After blowing up from producing the hit single “Gecko,” Oliver dropped an hour long deep house set that had the entire crowd grooving. Oliver brought a cool calm control over the crowd with his unique deep house sounds before the insanity of Dada Life to come. Finally after four hours of a wide variety of music, it was time to get ugly with Dada Life. Dada Life’s set was pure craziness with a massive pillow fight, inflatable bananas and champagne bottles, and Dada Life flags, while we heard our favorite songs like “One Smile” and “Happy Violence.” Dada Life’s set was truly epic and Insomniac provided some really incredible production. Dada Life continued to show their fans they absolutely love them by jumping on a silent disco set for the campers along with a meet and greet. This was something truly special and a once in a lifetime experience. We’ve been fortunate enough to attend a number of Dada Life events and as much as they all have there own special experience to me, this one was the best. We’d like to thank Insomniac and Dada Life for putting on such a great event and for making sure we all arrived beautiful and left ugly.
Photo credit: Insomniac
Written by Kevin Archila
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