This spooky season in Colorado, Hallowfreaknween, the largest annual costume contest party statewide, returned with a vengeance. This year was its fifth year running brought to you by the Triad Dragons. Electronic dance music (EDM) lovers from all four corners of the Rocky Mountain state and beyond made their way to Denver for this one-of-a-kind experience. Most all of the revelers were donned in costumes more elaborate and intricate than the average get-ups for a rave, which of course are over-the-top with color and awesomeness anyway – many being 100% original custom masterpieces.

What was the purpose of such a reunion?

To gather with like-minded individuals to celebrate this fun holiday with like-minded people, of course. Many came in even more elaborate costumes than most you see on the street – and it was obvious that they had spent either lots of money to buy or time to make (or both) their outfits in hopes of winning first place and a $500 prize in the costume contest.  Most importantly, though, they came to lose themselves in the music and dance the night away. For Colorado EDM fans, this event has earned the reputation as the biggest party to be at on this spooky holiday of freaks and ghouls.

Hallowfreaknween (HFW) 2012 was held at the 32,000 square foot National Western Complex in Denver. This venue has been getting utilized progressively more often for larger EDM events thrown by the Triad Dragons over the past few years. The setting offers a better experience than one would expect of a rave for a building that usually hosts rodeos and livestock shows as the main events there.  No doubt for a musical event there is a lot of work involved to perfect the sound quality. Normally loud sounds echo and resonate throughout the entire space. Think about it for a second- for a livestock show, the sound technicians must mostly only worry about making the voices of a few announcers speaking to be audible and understandable to everyone in attendance. As with any show, a sound check is performed and adjusted as necessary for optimal sound output.

On the other hand, a huge EDM event like HFW requires extra fine-tuned adjustments to the sound equipment as well as the Complex itself to decrease the echoes as much as possible and improve the sound quality/ preciseness to the best of the venue’s ability. This is one of the most important steps of setting the venue up for the night of the event, not only so people can distinguish one fast-paced beat from the next, but also to leave the attendees satisfied and eager to come back again in the future. I’ve met more fans in the EDM community specifically than any other musical genre that could be considered ‘sound-quality snobs’…perfect sound is an expectation for them and  is considered one of the most important necessities for them to enjoy themselves and the experience they had there. If the quality is less than par, it’s safe to bet that this will be noted and the observation will be voiced as one of the top complaints from patrons after the show to friends, acquaintances, and online to strangers through social media. It could very well determine if those fans return to the venue for another show -or even if new fans attend for the first time– for events of this nature that are held at the same location or even by the same promoter(s) in the future. With that in mind, I have been impressed with the sound quality at every EDM event I have attended at the National Western Complex thus far.

This year’s main theme for Hallowfreaknween was advertised as the “Gateway to Heaven and Hell.” There were five different stages, each with their own sub-theme beyond the main one:

• The Gateway Arena—Mainstage
• Hell’s Playground
• Haunted AOX stage
• Floorbangrs Graveyard
• Heaven’s Playground

The line-up was pretty decent. There were three big headliners featured: Bingo Players, R3hab, and Mord Fustang, and they were accompanied by nearly forty of Colorado’s own talented local DJs/Producers over the course of this one night. This is the biggest number of artists performing at Hallowfreaknween since its creation. In that respect this event has definitely grown in size.

If I had to award a gold, silver, and bronze metal to this five-year old Colorado Halloween tradition based on notoriety and marketability alone of the headliners, I’d award this year’s lineup with the bronze metal, falling only behind the HFW events that were thrown in 2007 (gold metal) and in 2011 (silver metal). As peculiar as it might seem, the first HFW in 2007 had the best lineup this event has seen thus far, again based only on the notoriety and marketability of the headlining DJs that were booked for the show.  2007’s all-star lineup included Paul Van Dyk, The Crystal Method, Kaskade, Sander Kleinenberg, and DJ Dan. All five of these artists have at some point (sometimes even multiple times) been featured in the prestigious list of top 100 DJs internationally in DJ Mag, a British publication with a reputation as the authority on who’s-who and what’s-what in the EDM scene since 1991. Last year’s (2011) lineup comes in second place with the silver metal, featuring Cosmic Gate, Showtek, DJ Irene, Lisa Lashes, and Dehasse as the headliners.

New kid on the block Mord Fustang has a very promising future in the world of EDM at the ripe age of 21. 2012 has been a year of break-through and destiny for this European youngster, who was one of the main headliners for this year’s massive. I have been keeping my eye on this Estonian electro-step artist since early 2011. He has all the necessary ingredients to one day become a DJ on the better half of the top 100 rated DJs internationally in DJ Mag himself. He is only recently finding popularity on a much larger scale in the latter half of 2012. Before his headlining gig at HFW this year, he landed a coveted spot throwing down a set at Colorado’s world-famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre (which has a capacity  of nearly 10,000 people) this past July for Global Dance Festival. (GDF REVIEW 2012) He’s obviously aiming for world domination (and has the talent and potential to do so); coming up quick in the music scene.

For instance, his mile-high debut was at Vinyl nightclub (capacity 2300) where he flaunted his mostly undiscovered talent to a mostly empty nightclub in September 2011. In less than a year (ten months, to be exact), he went from doing gigs at smaller nightclubs in Denver to being listed as one of the bigger names for GDF 2012, held at a venue over 4x larger than when he first appeared here, and of course the third biggest name on the lineup for an event such as HFW. Oh ya, did I mention that exactly a month before Hallowfreaknween, Mord Fustang beat up the Funktion-Ones (probably causing rumbles measurable on the Richter scale throughout LoDo) at Beta Nightclub to a sold-out crowd on September 27, 2012? Obviously the sexy romance in the air between Colorado and Mord Fustang is mutual. Fantastic, because unrequited love sucks.

R3hab (a solo act) and the Bingo Players (a duo) were the two names above Mord Fustang on the handbill, and both are talented, well-established artists that have been making people shake what their momma gave em  for quite some time now (R3hab has been around since 2008, and the Bingo Players since 2006).

Although this lineup was pretty fair, I’d like to see a better balance of headliners to locals for this annual event in the future. Don’t get me wrong, I probably pay attention to/have a lot more respect and love for local talent than most EDM lovers I’ve met (it doesn’t hurt that Colorado hosts an overabundance of talented local EDM artists, either), but if a particular single event is going to boast having five different stages, it might be wise to assign bigger non-local headliners to each individual stage. The three artists whose names sold most of the tickets to this event only performed on the Gateway Arena (main stage) and mostly the rest of the artists were our beloved Colorado locals. Please let there be no misunderstanding -there is absolutely nothing wrong with this – but to reiterate, the lineup seemed very unbalanced. I would be surprised if there was much of an audience at any of the other four stages the rest of the night past 10:30pm when Mord Fustang’s set began, which was followed immediately by R3hab‘s set, and then finally the Bingo Players’ set to cap off the night. There was no real enticement to wander around elsewhere in the venue. I am hoping to see a lineup more evened out, and look forward to this improvement (fingers crossed) for Hallowfreaknween in the future.

Bingo Players

Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud

R3hab

Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud

Mord Fustang

Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud

 

Photography By:

Anna Stein