On Saturday February 18th we had the pleasure of attending the Air & Style snowboarding and music festivals on the grounds of the LA Coliseum. The event allowed for some epic photos of the snowboarders and music talent including Flume, Vince Staples and Chromeo. The event is an eclectic mix of rock, rap, hip hop, edm crossed with a snowboarding jump competition built on a 16-story stand at the event site! Not known by many is that the ‘Flying Tomato’ aka Olympic Snowboarding gold-medalist Shaun White after initially hosting the event pushed his cards all in and bought the event!
Our day began in the late afternoon at twilight with Atmosphere, a hip hop duo out of Minneapolis. New to us, the duo played a pounding set of rock and rap which the group’s fans (and newcombers like us) enjoyed.
As the group continued to play we made our way over to the front of the 16-story ski jump to watch the setup for the first round of the snowboarding jump competition. The mix of blasting hip hop and snowboarding definitely led to a great atmostphere not too different from a busy Saturday afternoon at a mountain-top beer garden!
Once nice programming feature of Air & Style was the staggered set times so one could catch the beginning of each performer’s set then head across the venue to catch the next set. Watching top level snowboarders perform tricks high about the Coliseum parking lot was definitely a unique experience! Next up after watching the snowboarding was a short walk over to the Winter Stage to check out Chromeo. Chromeo has been a stalwart of the electro/indie dance music scene for many years now and they did not disappoint with a rock and electro-based set. The set included their hit singles “Jealous (I Ain’t With It),” “Over Your Shoulder” and “Come Alive.”
Bailing out a bit before to end to be able to catch the beginning of Vince Staples, we made ourselves over to the smaller ‘Summer Stage’. Staples has been on the radar of EDM fans due to his work with uber producer Flume on the track ‘Smoke & Retribution.’ Staples dropped the heat with an angry set including some of his well known tracks “Norf Norf” and “Fire.” Soon after Staples set started was the 2nd round of qualifying runs at the snowboard ramp so we headed back over one more time to check out the last jumps of the night. The snowboarders made some pretty slick jumps with many doing 720s and more! The top 5 finishers are shown below:
Top 5 Air + Style 2017 Los Angeles Big Air Competition
Max Parrot / 178.66 score
Seppe Smits / 162.66 score
Markus Kleveland / 161.99 score
Sven Thorgren / 157.33 score
Chris Corning / 148.66 score
As the snowboarding was close to wrapping up, the main event of the night, Flume performing live, was getting ready to kick off on the Winter Stage. Drawing the biggest crowd of the night, to be expected after selling out 4 consecutive nights at the Shrine just last year, the Aussie did not disappoint. As one would expect, several other artists showed up for guest vocals during Flume’s set including Vic Mensa (who also performed at Air & Style this night), Pusha T and Vince Staples all of whom added vocals to tracks released in 2016.
Other notable names which played the event include Major Lazer, TV on the Radio and XYLO. We would be remiss if we did not mention there were 2 beer gardens, a large VIP area with open bar overlooking the snowboarding jump site and a slew of food vendors to satisfy every craving. All in all, the third iteration of the Air & Style festival is a welcome addition to the LA/SoCal festival scene. We look forward to seeing the event return in 2018!
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