EDM pioneer Paul Oakenfold reflects on EDC Las Vegas history

Paul Oakenfold, the pioneering electronic music DJ and producer, looked out over the Electric Daisy Carnival grounds from a private box atop the Las Vegas Motor Speedway grandstand.

Beneath him, a sprawling crowd pulsed under a sea of flashing lights illuminating nine main stages. The hundreds of thousands of attendees within Oakenfold’s sights are drawn annually to the Las Vegas desert for three nights of what organizers call one of the world’s premier electronic dance music festivals.

The occasion for the 62-year-old trance DJ was a quick interview and photo shoot before his Saturday set.

As he stood facing the photographer with his arms spread, Oakenfold smiled and broke out in a chant.

“EDC! EDC! EDC!”

Moments earlier, he was explaining what EDC Las Vegas means to him.

His relationship with Pasquale Rotella, founder and CEO of Insomniac, dates to the 1990s, when early iterations of Electric Daisy Carnival were staged in Los Angeles. Oakenfold was among the DJs who played those early events, and he has returned regularly to the festival through the years.

“To be part of EDC, the significance, it’s the best. It’s not about the biggest. It really truly is the best electronic music festival in America, and I’ve played them all,” Oakenfold said. “I mean, just look out there and look at the love and detail that Pasquale and his team have put into it. I won’t mention the others because I’m not into putting one down, but the (difference) between so many other big brand festivals and this … this is next level.”

Oakenfold’s background in Las Vegas predates EDC’s.

In 2008, Oakenfold bet that Las Vegas was ready to embrace electronic music on a large scale, launching his “Perfecto” residency at Rain Nightclub. Performing nearly every Saturday for three years at the Palms, he drew steadily growing crowds — and helped ignite the city’s EDM club scene.

His residency set the template for the high-paying DJ residencies that now dominate nightclubs along the Strip.

Two years after Oakenfold began his Rain residency, tragedy struck at the 2010 EDC at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Sasha Rodriguez, a 15-year-old who had sneaked into the event, died after overdosing on MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy. The Los Angeles County coroner ruled her death an accident, and city and county officials barred Insomniac from returning to the venue.

About 280 miles northeast, Insomniac found a new home at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Oakenfold’s residency helped put Las Vegas on the map for EDM. Insomniac’s announcement that it was moving its flagship festival to Nevada further solidified the city’s profile in the genre.

“We already laid down the landscape and the foundations for electronic music before they came here,” Oakenfold recalled.

Insomniac relocating EDC to Las Vegas, he said, “was a great move — a great move.”

These days, Oakenfold continues performing around the world, collaborating with artists of all stripes, writing and producing, among other projects.

His setlist Saturday, in the sprawling Quantum Valley stage area, included remixes of some of his biggest tracks, including a newly reworked, unannounced version of “Bullet in the Gun”; another unreleased, mystery remix of “Not Over Yet,” and he closed the night with a modern rework of his own classic “Southern Sun,” remixed by former BBC Radio 1 resident and chart-topping electronic artist Will Atkinson.

Oakenfold said he would be releasing “Trance Mission II,” a new spin on his 2014 studio album “Trance Mission,” a project at the time dedicated to modernizing the definitive trance classics that shaped his early career.

“Trance Mission II,” he said, “would introduce a new generation to those classics with a modern vibe.” He added that he spent more than six months going “back and forth” with collaborating DJs to refine the tracks.

Next, he said he is setting his sights on “Trance Mission III,” working with “all young, new DJs.” “Then we’re going to release all three albums on vinyl,” he said. “I want to end on the next generation and say, ‘These are the DJs and producers that I recognize as seizing the future.’”

Highlighted sets

John Summit, the accountant-turned-DJ, drew what many described as the weekend’s largest crowd during his prime-time set shortly after midnight on Day 2. Fans packed Kinetic Field shoulder to shoulder, leaving little room to dance as others pushed through the crowd searching for space. The high-energy set was, fittingly, electric.

The highly anticipated back-to-back performance by GRiZ and Wooli at Kinetic Field on the final night lived up to its hype. The contrast of GRiZ’s soulful sounds with Wooli’s pounding bass made the wait for their first-ever B2B worthwhile.

Tiësto, a mainstay of the EDM scene in Las Vegas and EDC’s past, also wowed his Day 2 audience at the Circuit Grounds stage. He opened the set by debuting his new single, “Don’t Lose Your Head,” featuring Olivia Sebastianelli, then later surprised his audience when producer Caleb Arredondo joined him for a performance of Tiësto’s remix of “Infinity” by Guru Josh.

Half a million strong

Insomniac, which organizes EDC, on Wednesday announced the overall attendance at this weekend’s festival was 525,000, or 175,000 ravers on each night at the speedway. The total matches the estimated 525,000 that turned out for the 2024 and 2025 festivals.

Insomniac marked the 30th anniversary of EDC this year, and the fans responded. Every festival pass sold out within 24 hours of release, setting a record for the fastest sellout of all-access passes in EDC Las Vegas history.

Weather

During the first two nights of the festival, attendees were treated to fairly ideal weather conditions for mid-May in Las Vegas. Temperatures overnight Friday ranged from the upper 70s to low 80s, with mostly calm to light breezes. Overnight Saturday, the temperatures were slightly cooler, with steady breezes dropping the mercury into the low 70s by 2 a.m. and dipping into the upper 60s by dawn Sunday.

Sunday, however, did not sway from the high winds and cooler temperatures that were forecast late last week. High sustained winds of 20 to 30 mph, with gusts topping 50 mph, buffeted the speedway, causing EDC organizers to temporarily suspend sets at the Circuit Grounds, BassPod and Quantum Valley stages and to put the brakes on carnival rides throughout the festival grounds.

Keeping it safe

The massive EDC crowds this weekend didn’t make for an overabundance of crime, according to stats released Tuesday morning by Metro Police.

According to Metro’s public information office, officers made 59 arrests over the festival’s three days. Of those, 24 were on felony charges; 35 were on misdemeanor charges. In addition, police issued 52 citations, including traffic and misdemeanor citations, over the weekend.

The Metro PIO did not provide a breakdown of specific charges.

This story was updated to add the total attendance at this year's EDC Las Vegas.