We started out with some nice electro tunes from Russian Arty, followed by Steve Angello's baby brother AN21 with lots of great progressive tracks. Afterwards, fellow Swedes Cazzette took the stage followed by the usual antics from "DJ" Steve Aoki and topped of with pop DJ David Guetta. The energy at the stadium was high, everybody was in a good mood and love was in the air. I gotta say, neither Steve Aoki or Guetta are among my favorites. Aoki seems to use valuable set time to fool around with cakes and inflatable boats while a prerecorded mix plays in the background. I would prefer him to skip all that and focus on the music. Guetta is just to stupid looking to be taken seriously and he just plays all the safe popular tracks, many of which is his own featuring a variety of pop artist. The highlight of the day had to be Arty, Cazzette and AN21. Don't get me wrong, we had an amazing day with plenty of Rosé Champagne, bootleg vodka and redbull and plenty of soon, but the headliners was a bit forgettable. More was to come though as day 2 came...
We arrived at the stadium around 3 PM, just in time to order more Champagne and Redbull for our nutsack smuggled vodka (hard liqueur is not legal in that kind of venues in Sweden) and to catch one of my electro favorites, Swedish Albin Myers take the stage. He's always great, very energetic, lost of movement and gestures besides the usual "index-finger in the air" or the "both hands in the air" moves. Another Swede took over the decks (they have plenty of talent over there), Otto Knows delivered a great high energy progressive house set topped of with his summer anthem from last year Million Voices - imminent goosebumps!
Young dutch superstar Hardwell was up next, he had a gig in Copenhagen the same night, so I guess that's why he played so early, as he should have had a later slot amongst the headliners. Hardwell absolutely ripped Nya Ullevi apart with hardcore dutch electro house combined with his own melodic sing along tracks, not to forget the mega hit Spaceman - more goosebumps! The rather ungrateful task to follow Hardwell was left with W&W, former trance dudes gone house, surprised very positively, sending us all into outer space with their latest trancy/progressive hits "Lift Off!" and "Thunder".
Time for a breather - and a stage change, Swedish Galavant played a short in between half hour show with some live singing, but we did really pay attention as we went to re-energize in the food court area. We got back as German super talent Zedd took over with more great electro and melodic bangers, including his own hits Spectrum and Clarity - I even think I saw someone shed a tear during Clarity whilst I was busy having goosebumps again. But our euphoria could get even higher. Yet another Swedish rising star was on decks. Alesso lifted us even higher into the stratosphere with plenty of feel good "scream along" prog house hits, including the monster "Calling" he did with Jedi master Ingrosso - just when I thought I was done having goosebumps... Great warm up for The King - Axwell.
I've seen him a couple of times now, and he never seems to stop amazing me. We a surgeons precision, who played carefully selected and very effective tracks to take us on our 1 ½ hour final ride into Nirvana. His set included quite a few SHM tracks like Greyhound and the not yet released Axwell/Ingrosso collab "We Come, We Rave, We Love" featured on the Final SHM world tour, the new one "Center of the Universe" as well as old tunes like "Heart Is King" and and "Leave The World Behind" in yet another mashup. I think I finally lost my mind when he dropped "In My Mind", my very top house summer anthem. All hail - Axwell is King!
What an amazing weekend in Gothenburg - we all left the lovely city the next day feeling very fulfilled and ready for more Summerburst next year.