Seismic Dance Event deserves its place amongst today’s list of must-attend dance music festivals [Review]

Words by Ross Goldenberg and Zach Salafia

Just take a few moments to think of a few dance music festivals from the top of your head.

Over the past decade-plus, we’ve had the fortune of festivals like Ultra, Tomorrowland, and CRSSD Festival becoming a constant in our event calendar. And while we have zero plans of those annual trips changing anytime soon, it was time for Dancing Astronaut to broaden its festival horizons and travel to a weekend-long event that wouldn’t have necessarily come straight to mind had we been asked that original question in years past. But one thing that we did know ahead of time is that year in and year out, Seismic Dance Event has routinely curated one of the finest billings in house and techno in today’s festival landscape. 

When the Real Music Events-backed festival published its 7.0 edition lineup this past May, it grabbed our attention without even reading until the very bottom of the poster. A couple of months later and we turned that temptation into reality, with a plan fully locked in to head to Austin in November and secure some first-hand verification surrounding the endless number of positive comments that we’ve heard about Seismic Dance Event. And after those three days were all said and done, we can officially confirm that we were able to do just that.

Last three days absolutely flew by but Seismic 2024 has to be up there with some of my favorite festival experiences in recent memory

A million vids + more thoughts about DA Seismic year 1 soon but firstly just want to give a massive thank you to the @SeismicTX team pic.twitter.com/v4D63kmKjP

— Dancing Astronaut (@dancingastro) November 18, 2024

To set both the literal and figurative stage for those continuing to read, Seismic Dance Event mainly finds itself occupying the surrounding grounds of Austin’s go-to locale for dance music, The Concourse Project, which includes the Tsunami stage—the festival’s outdoor mainstage—as well as a pair of more intimate stages known as The Realm and The Secret. But Seismic also has a footprint within The Concourse Project—a year-round, indoor venue on the site—where attendees can find the Volcano stage. Within just moments of stepping out of our Uber—which we would like to note was an incredibly seamless method of transportation both to and from the site—and strolling around the festival, an early takeaway we gathered was that Seismic—which self-describes itself as a “boutique festival”—had both an intimate event feel while simultaneously feeling more than spacious. Areas like food concessions, merch, and bathrooms were nothing more than a stone’s throw away and had virtually little to no lines any time we’d walk by.

Unlike larger-sized festivals where travel time between stages expectedly must be accounted for, Seismic’s compact layout made it nearly painless to bounce from stage to stage, with congestion and sound bleed having not crossed our minds for an instant. And we say “nearly painless” because as many can attest to, there was often a lengthy line to enter the Volcano stage, which we would very loosely label as our one and only “complaint” of the weekend. But that’s simply the unfortunate reality of a space that can only fit 2,000 people of the 5,000 or so daily festival attendees. Especially when there were several highly anticipated sets like Wax Motif back-to-back Matroda, Max Styler, Cloonee, and more going on inside.

And while we’re not entirely sure what Seismic’s direct answer to that problem would be, we’d like to counter the above sentence in saying that the Volcano stage never felt the slightest bit overcrowded at any point during the weekend. And the same can be said for any of the other stages. We all know that‘s become a serious topic of conversation in today’s day and age as well as being a key determining factor when deciding the next event or festival to attend. Even when the headliners came on at either Volcano or Tsunami, there always seemed to be plenty of space to move in any which direction.

Something else that we also felt the need to point out is the neighborly community the Seismic team has cultivated. Throughout our entire stay, everyone we’d come in contact with—from Seismic attendees to Seismic’s festival staff to Seismic’s two owners, Kelly Gray and Andrew Parsons—were welcoming, friendly, and open-armed at any moment of the day. And that genuinely added another layer of enjoyment to our overarching Seismic experience.

We—of course—cannot continue this without diving into the actual reason we made the trip out to Austin: the lineup. It’d be a severe understatement if the word “stacked” rolled off our tongues when describing the list of names that Seismic rounded up for its 7.0 installment. And we knew that from the moment we had laid eyes on the poster back in May. 

We could spend the next several hours talking about every single set that we’d taken in during those three days, but we’ll do our best to condense it all for now.

Our weekend commenced on Friday at the Tsunami stage as the sun began to fall during Madison Palmer, Seismic’s own Andrew Parsons, and Layton Giordani. And as nightfall ensued, we journeyed into The Concourse Project—for the first time—for a string of tech-house sets from Westend, Deeper Purpose, and Sonny Fodera before ultimately returning back outside to close day one with the Dark Prince himself, Gesaffelstein. Immediately following the final moments of day one, we had our doubts about how day two or day three could possibly surpass our debut stint at Seismic. But we were gladly proven wrong, with day two including a pair of standout sets from melodic techno favorites like KAS:ST and Massano at Tsunami before we were led back to the Volcano stage for Riordan, Max Styler—who we ultimately crowned as Dancing Astronaut‘s weekend favorite—and finally, Waxtroda. And our day two festival evening concluded back outdoors at Tsunami once again with Carl Cox’s hybrid set. In between our Sunday to truly explore everything the festival had to offer beyond its two primary stages, we still tallied up some memorable performances from Jerro, Sammy Virji, Disclosure, and none other than Eric Prydz himself—who was accompanied by a brief rain mist—to cap off the festival portion of the weekend.

Seismic’s lineup was about as well curated as it possibly gets from top to bottom, with headliners fully cashing in on the lofty expectations that we had for them and Seismic’s well-rounded undercard delivering countless standout moments from the weekend. And aside from the on-and-off again rain—which we were admittedly in favor of—that had sprinkled in throughout Prydz’s closing appearance, we have to make mention that our first trip to Seismic had certainly lucked out considering the absolutely sublime weather that served as the backdrop to the weekend.

We would be remiss if we didn’t nod to what went on once the festival curfew hit each evening and the party moved indoors. Normally once a festival concludes, the journey must be made elsewhere for those looking to extend the evening. But a massive perk of Seismic’s approach was that its afterparties were hosted on site within both The Concourse Project as well as a separate room—no more than 100 yards away—called Club BLK. And we found ourselves in either of the two rooms into the early hours of each morning, switching off between locations on night one, spending night two with Riordan and Matroda, and expectedly rounding out the weekend with Jerro before receiving a two-hour masterclass of a set from Eric Prydz under his alter-ego, Cirez D.

For as intimate as the Seismic feels upon first glance, its production undoubtedly holds its own amongst the best as soon as everything kicks into action. Seismic’s stage designs were top-tier across the board—with a special shoutout to PHASE[3] Concepts, who were behind the Tsunami’s stage design—and its sound quality seemed to rival any club or festival setup that we’d previously come in contact with. Factoring in everything from its stage and lighting production to its sound quality to simply the room on the dancefloor, The Concourse Project felt like it was amongst the finest indoor spaces that we’ve had the pleasure of experiencing thus far. And it even had an additional LED panel that spanned a majority of the roof—which was implemented solely for the festival weekend—which certainly elevated the Volcano stage experience. But even without that roof LED addition, The Concourse Project felt like a first-class space that we are itching to visit again during a non-Seismic part of the calendar.

If we could sum up our weekend in Austin in just one sentence, it would be the following: Seismic Dance Event is the pound-for-pound best festival that we’ve ever experienced in more than a decade of attending dance music events.

We went into the weekend mostly blind. We’d never been to Seismic. We’d never been to Austin. And we’d never even step foot in the state of Texas. While reminiscing at the airport on Monday morning, we consistently found ourselves bringing up the idea that the weekend went about as flawlessly as it gets when it comes to all the moving parts that make up a festival trip. And with the year-long countdown now on until Seismic’s 8.0 edition in 2025, we are one-million percent in favor of giving Seismic Dance Event a permanent spot on the Dancing Astronaut event calendar going forward.

Thank you so much to Seismic Dance Event, Real Music Events, The Concourse Project, and all of those involved that made the festival happen.

Featured image: Anthony Djuren

Tags: real music events, seismic, seismic dance event, The Concourse Project

Categories: Features