This year Imagine Festival, the bass heavy super festival in Atlanta Georgia, gave a full thumbs up to Trance. On Sunday they hosted their first fully dedicated day to the melodic uplifting genre via the Aeria stage. Although one of the smaller of the 5+ stages, the crowd showed up in massive support right from doors. Even while competing with Kaskade and Griz on the two maninstages, the trance enthused crowd overflowed the Aeria boundries.
The Proper Warm Up
Opening up the day saw locals Nhexus, Reliquary and Unity Events head Ryan Michael take things into the epic realms. US trance mainstay for over the past decade, Kenneth Thomas, brought the crowd into an emotional frenzy. His set was filled with original productions and well known mashups including a techy take on Above & Beyond’s anthem A Thing Called Love mashed up with Ilan Bluestone's epic Big Ben.
Next up Gabriel & Dresden brought a mixture of their own in-depth mashups as well as plenty of material from their resurgent album The Only Road. Beyond their own records, Josh and Dave dug deep into the techno depths for an incredible moment with Kolsch & Tiga – HAL that had the crowd absolutely hypnotized.
Enter the Dragon!
Finally Paul Oakenfold arrived on scene with an air of mysticism that only a few DJs carry. While being excited to be reunited with longtime touring partner and Perfecto artist Paul hands the decks over to Kenneth Thomas for a 30 minute encore set. As a result the crowd response was massive. After the energetic warm up Paul dives deep into the rabbit hole for 60 minutes of psy-trance and classic trance. Culminating in a rousing response as the crowd and raged until the last moment.
The Areia stage was then a wrap and shortly after so was Imagine Festival 2018.
While we eagerly await the announcement of Imagine’s 2019 Trance acts, stay fed with some of our favorite sets from the festival.
Live Sets from Imagine Music Festival
Kenneth Thomas Live @ Imagine 2018
https://soundcloud.com/djkenneththomas/sound-on-fire-with-kenneth-thomas-imagine-2018-320
Nhexis B2B Ryan Michael Live @ Imagine 2018
Reliquary ILive @ Imagine 2018
Kaskade Live @ Imagine 2018
https://www.mixcloud.com/3DM_LIVE/kaskade-live-imagine-music-festival-atlanta-usa-23-sep-2018/
