For the second year in a row, Summer Set Music and Camping Festival has exceeded the limits when it comes to festival fun. Approximately 15,000 per day attended this year’s installment, more than doubling last year’s turnout. Not only were the tickets on the inexpensive side when compared to other festivals, but also the lineup was one for the books.
Big-name artists like Passion Pit, Common, Big Gigantic and STS9 helped draw in crowds from a wide variety of genres, while bass-heavy acts like GRiZ, Flosstradamus, Zedd and Adventure Club brought in electronic fans by the masses. To no surprise, every act came with the heat, which ended up matching the summer’s sun, as it stayed high the entire weekend in Somerset, Wisconsin.
The festival grounds offered 3 stages for fans to frolic, acting as a pinball machine of music fans could feed off. The stages included The Grove, the Main Stage, and The Saloon stage. Due to high demand for some EDM acts, The Grove area could sometimes be hard to get into because capacity was close to being over exceeded at some points.
With acts like Diplo creating his own twerk-fest within The Grove ‘s tent, and Wick-it The Instigator taking us back through time with classic samples that spanned from music moguls Metallica to Dr. Dre., it was well worth the wait to enter. Some fans even decided to post up the whole day to make sure they had a spot to see their favorite acts take stage.
After parties with Gigantic Underground Conspiracy and EOTO raged into the early morning hours without missing a beat. The tunes could even be heard from different campsites; so if you didn’t have tickets, you could still enjoy the sounds of the killer side projects. Gigantic Underground Conspiracy featuring members from Big Gigantic, Conspirator, and Underground Orchestra, melted the faces for all that were down to get down Saturday night. For Sunday’s after party, Jason Hann and Michael Travis of The String Cheese Incident unleashed The Lotus stage setup for late-night partiers.
In addition to late-night shows to feed the needs of festival goers, the vendor turnout ran high as attendees were able to stock up on festi-food to keep them going throughout the days and nights, and, on goods from an assortment of unique vendors from around the country.
Companies like Spoiled, a start-up that specializes in merchandising “heady“ and hip clothing, in addition to unique glass, metal, and stone works of art, had their booth flooded with those who wanted to bring a taste of Summer Set back with them. Other vendors like Made and Grassroots also made their presence known with booths setup and stocked with one-of-a-kind clothing, accessories, and art projects.
After day after day of top-notch music and incredible vibes running rampant, the festival finally came to an end with closing sets by STS9 and Diplo. At the end of STS9’s set one of the festival’s promoters came out to thank the patrons, security, staff, and artists that came out to unite for an unforgettable weekend at Summer Set Music and Camping Festival. He also welcomed everyone back next year as the epic festival saga continues.
If you didn’t get a chance to attend the last two chapters of React Presents’ Wisconsin masterpiece, make it a point to jump on early bird tickets and enjoy the excitement leading up to the countdown for Summer Set 2014!
VIEW SUMMER SET PHOTOS ROUND 1