Our route to New York City was not your average one; from our home in Holland we jetted over to Mexico City to a show, then one day later we were in Las Vegas DJ'ing one the best pool parties of the summer. Finally, 48 epic hours later, we found ourselves en route to Electric Zoo -- our plane touched down in Newark at 7 a.m. Saturday morning.
After three and a half hours of sleep we were off to Electric Zoo, in our 15-passenger van with our crew -- ready to play. Once we arrived on Randall's Island we had a quick meeting with our management team to share some of our new tracks that we would showcase later in our set. After the meeting we spent some time talking to our fellow DJ's in the artists lounge alongside the East River.
One short hour later, we took the Main Stage to play for a massive crowd! When we were on the stage, you saw us perform, we saw you in the crowd, but could you tell what we were thinking?
Festivals are a time for us to see familiar faces backstage; people we have shared the stage with at other festivals, people we have met in faraway cities. But no matter where we are, or what show we are playing, when we climb that stage to play, our one and only interest is the crowd. We look everyone up and down, and read them closely. When we drop a brand new Bingo Players track at a festival, we want to see how the crowd reacts, we want to know if it's any good and to put it simply, if it makes people dance.
We're working on finishing one our our newest tracks called "Out Of My Mind" and we've been working on it for quite a while to get it just right. Once we think the track is ready, we let it loose from the studio and take it out on the road to test it on the crowds. We will test the new track in clubs all over the world, but the best test is always at a festival. We're getting the raw reaction to the music... from hard core fans who know all our songs, people who are just hanging out, and people who've never heard of us.
When we drop a new Bingo Players track along side our previous records and the new track gets the same reaction, (or better yet -- a bigger one) we know we've nailed it. If the reaction from the crowd is mediocre, then we know we need to go back and work on the track a bit more, but we always keep our original sentiment in mind, though the dynamics and the structure of the track may change a bit.
If the response still isn't there yet then it's time to work harder. This whole process of us testing and then finally releasing a new track can take a month or more, depending how fast we work, how busy our touring schedule is, and what edits we decide to make.
Besides being full of old friends, new fans, great music, energy and excitement, for us festivals are our laboratories to test new material. Electric Zoo, being in NYC, is possibly one of the best Bingo Players laboratories here in America. This year we tested a handful of our newest, freshest tracks... What did you think?