Head Trip Festival Exceeds ALL Expectations During Inaugural Year

For a while on Saturday, Head Trip looked as though it might be remembered for the set that never happened. Lightning had interrupted FISHER and Chris Lake, Calvin Harris was still waiting to play, and the first night ended with an evacuation. By Sunday, Harris had been fitted into a bill that already included Skrillex and Swedish House Mafia. A weekend sold as a one-time event had acquired a genuinely unpredictable second act.

Head Trip felt like a mini Coachella, which was part of its charm. The Empire Polo Club supplied the familiar grounds and the sense of being back in Indio for something large, but the festival concentrated most of its attention on a single main stage. The format made it easy to stay with the music. You could follow the main bill as a sequence, hearing one DJ hand the evening to the next, with less of the constant calculation that accompanies a festival built around competing headliners.

The 360-degree setup was one of the coolest parts of that experience. Romain Pissenem and High Scream’s design carried the production out into the field, so the show felt bigger than the enormous screen in front of the DJs. Reflective structures and lighting around the crowd made the space feel considered from more than one direction. It was a good setting for a festival that wanted people to settle in together, and it gave each act plenty to work with once darkness arrived.

Sunflower Sound System gave the grounds another center of interest. Floating Points’ custom installation surrounded the audience with ten speaker stacks inside an acoustically treated dome, with artwork and a mechanical mirrorball giving the room a personality of its own. Its lineup included DJs like Ben UFO, Four Tet, and Avalon Emerson alongside Shepherd himself. Having that space available changed the festival’s shape: the main stage could deliver huge shared moments, while Sunflower offered a more intimate place to follow records and different musical instincts (and listen to at with really high quality speakers).

Saturday had already changed before the evening’s shutdown. Weather delayed the opening and moved the main-stage timetable earlier, with Calvin Harris brought forward in an attempt to complete the night. Seth Troxler and Ben Sterling opened, followed by Peggy Gou with Four Tet. Under Construction then made strong use of the production’s industrial scale, until the lightning alert around 9 p.m. brought their performance to a halt. The rest of the night was canceled. Harris would have to wait.

Article & Photos by: Andrew Ameter