So… Was Lights All Night Actually Lit All Night??
Does anyone actually say “lit” anymore? Who knows… but it works for this title.
So, was it??
If we’re talking literally, then yes. Between the multiple massive LED walls, suspended lighting, absurd amount of lasers, pyro, art installations, and trippy merchants, there was no shortage of awesome lights at Lights All Night. But that’s just a shitty dad joke, because obviously what you really wanna know is if spending New Years Eve with Disco Donnie and 15,000 friends is worth it.
Well… truthfully, it depends.
Like everything in life, different folks prefer different strokes. Now don’t think about that too much – we promise your partner loves your strokes. Nothing to worry about. As for us, the New Year’s stroke we prefer (and experienced) is seeing some of the best bass and house artists in the world wreak havoc inside a massive warehouse in the heart of Dallas. It was cool, convenient and a hell of a party!
But you’re probably looking for the details. Well… let’s get right to the meat and potatoes of any festival, the music.
For us it went a bit of both ways. On one hand, artists we didn’t have any expectations for blew our minds. On the other, artists we’d been waiting to see for years seemed to be having an off night. Now of course music is completely subjective and you may have thought differently, but we’re keeping it real.
We’d never seen Peekaboo and hadn’t seen NGHTMRE since 2019. Lemme tell ya whut… they RIPPED. The flow of their sets, the diversity of their drops, their edits that included familiar vocals and melodies, and the precision of their production… *Chefs Kiss*. Another notable set was our girl Level Up, who, like we said she would, completely remixed our teenage years. Westend, KREAM, Chris Lorenzo, Subtronics, Ayybo, and Kyle Watson also had us moving.
As for the vibes, it IS in Dallas and we’re from Austin so… naturally we see the entire DFW metroplex as inferior. However, the people we met and danced with were incredible. The venue itself was well decorated and felt surprisingly intimate for how massive of a space it was. We had a little bit of trouble getting into the festival spirit on night one, but that was more of a personal problem (don’t worry we journaled about it and are good now). All around, vibes were high. And even though it was packed, we never had trouble navigating the venue and thought the stage layouts made seeing multiple artists during set-time conflicts very manageable.
Lastly, we’re all about growth so… what could have been better??
Welp, the New Year’s midnight celebration didn’t quite go as planned. Unfortunately only one lonely balloon made its way to the ground when the clock struck midnight. It looked like staff had a hard time freeing the hundreds of balloons waiting on the ceiling. Eventually the middle net was freed, but the other two remained stuck for the rest of the night. A bit anticlimactic, but to be honest, pretty funny.
Other than that, a couple things we noticed were that the waterfill station felt a bit over engineered. There was a long single gated line despite there being many empty filling nozzles when you finally made it to the front. The sound was also a bit much at the Disco Rodeo stage toward the back. It made earplugs a must-have for all the house heads. Aside from that, it was a great time and felt really well executed.
All in all.. our verdict is that Lights All Night was indeed lit all night.
Mister Mingos out *mic drop*