This past weekend Hard Summer returned to downtown Los Angeles after an extended absence with events taking place in east LA County and the Inland Empire.
Taking advantage of the LA Coliseum, BMO Stadium and several large open areas, the 5-stage event sold out with approximately 75,000 attendees nightly.
The event was the first large scale EDM event at the location since EDC took place in 2010 also at the same location. Hard Summer has become one of the largest events under the Insomniac brand with the music selection veering more on the bass-heavy side with some rap and house.
Some of the names present this past weekend included Kaskade playing B2B John Summit, Skrillex B2B Four Tet, Diplo B2B Blond:ish, DJ Diesel (Shaq), The Martinez Brothers, Deorro, Ludacris, Black Coffee and more.
We did encounter some issues with bottlenecks inside and outside the entrance on Saturday however they appeared to have been corrected on Sunday night and did not see the same problems.
The Hard Stage near the entrance hosted some of the largest crowds with John Summit and Kaskade on Saturday night and Skrillex and Four Tet on Sunday night. Both B2B sets could have easily filled the Coliseum or BMO Stadium rather than the parking lot location they were in which seemed to have been a choice they would probably revisit next time due to that number of fans clamoring to get close for each nights closing set.
Diplo and Blond:ish had one of the more inventive stage setups in BMO Stadium with a basketball hoop on the stage and a scoreboard on the videoscreens giving points for each basket made by the djs. Though Diplo appeared to be a bit of a ball hog on that 🙂
Getting to the festival was made easy this year due to the Metro Expo line running directly north of the event and having extended hours to 2AM both night.
Also for those that couldn’t get enough of the festival each night, there was a large number of Hard Fest events at nightclubs spread throughout the City of Los Angeles from Thursday through Sunday nights.
While it is not 100% confirmed to be returning in 2024, Insomnaic head Pasquale Rotella noted on social media today that they do plan on having it return with tweaks for a better event in 2024.
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We would say with EDC entrenched in Las Vegas, Hard Fest is a welcome return to large scale EDM fun in the middle of Los Angeles.
For more on Hard Fest and Insomniac check out the links below:
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