Events, Festivals, Music
Aug 20, 2019

Moonrise Music Festival 2019 Review

The Moonrise Festival kicked off another incredible year with their 2019 line up. Check out all the details on this festival!

Tiesto

Weather conditions were ideal in Baltimore this past weekend for the sixth annual Moonrise Festival to take place at Pimlico Race Course.  EDM fans shuffled through the concourse in droves each morning, and despite the very thorough security screening (read: shakedown) they were still eager to party once inside the festival grounds.  Saturday was jam packed with musical acts from California: DENM from Santa Barbara, Zhu from San Francisco, as well as LA based performers Justin CarusoCheat Codes, and NGHTRE SLANDER.  NGHTMRE even made a guest appearance during Big Gigantic’s set to perform their recent collaboration, “Like That”.

International acts came form far and wide to party stateside such as the Dutch duo Yellow Claw, South-African-Swiss sensation Nora En Pure, and Norwegian born DJ Alan Walker.  Be they citizens or not, everybody who took to the stage Saturday was full of energy and kept the raucous crowds jazzed throughout the day.  Sunday featured more of the same positive vibes, starting in the afternoon with awesome sets from DecadonRicky Retro, and Haywyre.  The brotherly duo of Jeff and Kevin Saurer a.k.a. Hippie Sabotage performed on the Lunar Stage, or at least half of them did.  Kevin spent most of the time crowd surfing or passing joints and water bottles around in the front row.  R3hab was scheduled to perform afterwards but due to travel complications could not, so in stepped Matoma with his repertoire of old school remixes and hits like “False Alarm” to put on a fantastic last minute set.  Same can be said for WooliBrondoCalciumHekler, and Mastadon who all came together for an impromptu b2b set after Seven Lions pulled out hours before their set time.  21 Savage built a beautiful, rocky LED staircase to perform on over at the Lunar Stage, an impressive feat to pull off in fifteen minutes.  Tiesto and Habstrakt closed out the festival in proper fashion with super tight sets, but the penultimate act on the Stellar Stage may have been the best of the weekend.  KSHMR, a Berkley based DJ of Indian decent, made his Baltimore debut by combining imaginative graphics with Hindi beats to craft a culturally influenced set enjoyable to the masses. 

Another successful (and dry) year of Moonrise Festival has proven that this is quickly becoming the preeminent summer festival on the East Coast and is a can’t miss next year!

Contributor,

Jonathan Sykes