After years of preparation and anticipation, Oregon Eclipse finally became a reality full of magical moments on Big Summit Prairie. With headliners you could only dream about being on the same grounds along with an international flavor and attention to detail, the Symbiosis Gathering surpassed our wildest imaginations.
Oregon Eclipse was a full world force collaboration with 10 festival teams including Sonic Bloom, Lightning in a Bottle, Envision, Rainbow Serpent, Hadra, Noisily, Origin, OMETEOTL, RE:Birth and Beloved.
The detail and love that was put into the production projected the strength and passion there is behind the electronic music community.
Take a listen to JPOD’s ‘Dance Tonite’ as you take our photo tour:
There was the finely carved out faces of the Earth and Sun stages that seemingly transformed into a robot at night, symbolizing the synchronicity of nature and electronics.
Then the Sky stage was built to create a house party atmosphere, perfect for the house and techno that was being pumped from the function ones.
The Moon stage had a life of its own with unique shade structures and a super chill lounge area. The Big Top stage was a circus tent with a surreal interior, people could even hop on a 3-foot-tall box to boogie above the crowd. The Silk Road stage blew up with artists like Trevor Hall and Beats Antique coming through and was a great place to find peaceful acoustic music.
The Eclipse stage may have been the most innovatively designed as it turned into a live harp.
Beyond the 7 actual stages, there were multiple docks on the lake with DJ’s and on the final day when all the other stages were closed, Glitter Ranch truly shined. There was also a bunch of moving party wagons, we were quite fond of the bubble blasting one.
Some magical moments for us came when Desert Hearts who threw down followed by some members of Dirtybird at the Sky stage. We definitely learned a little more about a thing called techno.
Enjoy Mikey Lion’s Burning Man set from 2016 below:
Also, Bassnectar put on a secret set on the Moon stage, spinning it old school Lorin style. CloZee certainly shined, with a filthy energetic set with a little unexpected hip-hop influence.
Then of course The String Cheese Incident nailed it and explored electronic tracks like Daft Punk‘s ‘Around the World’ that fell beautifully into ‘Rosie’.
We were transfixed on the psytrance stage quite a bit, especially when psytrance pioneer Raja Ram from Shpongle took the reigns.
Take a listen to 1200 Mics set at O.Z.O.R.A. festival to get a taste:
It was great witnessing Sound Tribe in the zone playing through the sunset Friday night.
Random Rab pumped his love bass out into the ether as the eclipse commenced. There was always someone good to catch and new artists to discover, except when the eclipse was reaching totality.
The total solar eclipse was not a false alarm and the moment was more astounding than what any of us could have imagined.
With over 30,000 people cheering on the moon, there was an overwhelming feeling of being connected with the universe.
The sky went dark, stars appeared, we waited patiently for the aliens, but only Marty McFly from Back to the Future showed up with his hover DeLorean.
“Where we are going, we don’t need roads”
Symbiosis found new ways to create an immersive experience at Oregon Eclipse.
For instance, the legendary Meow Wolf had an art installation that blew our minds. One creation allowed for people to press light up buttons on a wall to create beats, which was kind of like playing minesweeper. The other one used laser technology to create an electronic harp that we could run our hands through to create wizardly melodies.
Another immersive installation was a fire spewing octopus looking structure people could pull a dangling chain from to unleash the fireballs themselves.
Workshops filled half the festival schedule, which ended up having to be as big as a newspaper. There was plenty to appreciate that would require 7 days to fully take in.
Come join the next beautiful experience that is being titled ‘Patagoa’ being held in Chili during the next total solar eclipse in 2020. Stay tuned for more to come.
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