Tomorrowland Around The World; Bianca's lockdown highlights.

Written By Bianca Tavitian.

Well, wasn’t Tomorrowland Around The World 2020 one for the books?!

When the mega festival first announced their virtual festival, I instantly knew it was going to be epic, I just don’t think I completely knew how good it would be (albeit lockdown, no parties, no fun, living in “the most liveable state”).

We have spent the better part of 2020 watching every festival organisation bring their take on virtual festivals, but when Tomorrowland dropped a price on entry to their festival, you knew shit was about to go down! We went through a period where the weekends were filled (and at times, oversaturated) with livestream events, yet Tomorrowland had a prime placement in their social calendar, following a huge wind down of livestream events across the world in May, where artists were willingly choosing to spend more time in the studio making music as opposed to feeding the fans weekly with sets. It honestly felt like TATW20 was a reunion of such, as though artists were catching up for the TATW20 weekend, rather than feeling like they had to make their appearances online.

And I mean who wouldn’t want to be part of a history-making Tomorrowland? In the weeks leading up to the iconic weekend, more hints kept dropping like an Easter Bunny placing eggs before sunrise; 7 virtual stages, 3 of which being recreated to look identical to the real-life versions we know and love, a virtual island to house the weekend festival, treasure chests, party packs, and just when we thought that Tomorrowland was done with teasing us, BOOM! Prydz announces an exclusive show JUST for TATW20! For a gal who was in stage 3 lockdown, you bet I was dancing with joy (wearing a mask and sanitising after touching surfaces)!

So let me get straight into it, the good, the bad, the ugly (not really but it seemed fitting to write) of Tomorrowland Around The World 2020.

The MVP set:

Well shit, a few artists really brought it home for me. Aussie icon MaRLo brought an EPIC Tech Energy set, Dash Berlin (performing his FIRST Tomorrowland) was full of energy as always. But I am going to say my MVP award goes out to Laidback Luke.

I cannot recall how many times I said “I actually cannot believe this is LL playing”, and I watched this set across all 3 timezones on day 2! Quick math - ya girl said it A LOT.

It was heavier, full of bass, even with a touch of dub - sounds that LL usually steers away from, but MY GOSH was I living for it. He is known for being an absolute weapon on the decks, and this set puts some truth to this theory!

The WOW set:

I know people reading this will think I’m going to say Prydz, and while he will get a mention on my list, he has earnt a title separate to this - more on that later!

But Armin, WOWZERRRRRR, the guy can do no wrong, I get it. But Holy Mary Mother of Jesus, it’s been a LONG time since Armin has opened his sets the way he did for TATW20. There are 2 sets from Armin that are my equal best sets I’ve ever seen him play; Tomorrowland 2018, and Untold 2019. However, if I saw his TATW20 set live, it would be up there as a top contender. The whole set was deeper than the high energy banging sets he has been curating in the past couple of years. With the intro an ID that has since been identified as an unreleased track, ‘Mask’, mixed into one of his latest releases, ‘Hollow’, one can only hope that the back end of 2020 will see Armin releasing much deeper sounds, seeing the G.O.A.T return back to his roots.

If you haven’t watched his Untold 2019 set, then I suggest you do (it's 7.5 hours, buckle up). The overall vibe of Armin’s set felt like the last 2 hours of Untold 2019, it felt like he tapped back into his older sound, and my gosh, I have missed hearing him play like this. Nostalgic is honestly the best way to describe it.

If there are 2 things I would highlight individually about Armin’s set its:

1. Mr. Navigator definitely lost its opportunity of taking out the most played song in 2020, cheers for that Rona.

2. Blah! Blah! Blah! has had its time, let’s work on a new closing track, thanks Mr. van Buurz.

Best Revival artist:

Not that he’s exactly “new” to the scene, but Tiësto under his new Ver:West moniker is an absolute vibe. And while I have been told a lot of the music he played for his set were mainly releases from the Afterlife label, if this is what we have to do to get old mate Tijs to head back somewhat to his Trance roots, then I’ll take it!

New discovery:

There is actually a couple here I want to make everyone aware of so that we can throw our support to new acts when we attend the festival in 2021 (please don’t @ me with the negative vibes, we’re going, okay?)

1. Mr Pig - a solo dude from Mexico. His set was the daybreak session on day 1 in Elixir, and boy was that just a good time! It completely set the vibe for the day - I am thankful to have been told to switch him on!

2. B Jones - party gal from Ibiza, and you could just tell she was from there. Her set (directly after Mr. Pig) was full of energy, and made you want to dance the whole time!

Best Production:

See, I told you it was going to get a mention.

Prydz, hands down, all day every f*#kn day!

I don’t care if Prydz ain’t your vibe, the guy is a genius, in a league of his own and there is no denying it. The sheer fact that [CELL.] was created purely for Tomorrowland just makes me love the guy even more. I do wonder how much of this was supposed to be part of Holosphere 2.0 this year versus how much he genuinely created for the virtual festival. Either way, if he wants to transform my favourite Tomorrowland stage (Freedom) into a jail cell next year for me to watch the Holosphere project some insane visuals, bring it, cuff me to the rails with some fluffy pink handcuffs you can borrow from one of the Asians sitting in their cuddle puddle towards the front.

Although, no Opus. I get it, he must be bored of playing it, well dicks on him for creating an absolute banger of a track. He best learns to not play Nopus instead of Opus as a closer again. Sincerely, The entire world.

Favourite stage of the festival:

Freedom stage will always have my heart, but boy oh boy, they better be bringing us Elixir in 2021!!! I am all for another indoor stage, 2019 saw the inception of L’orangerie at both TML Winter and the Belgium edition, but my gosh does it need an aircon or 10! Give me a dark room with lasers any day of the week - Elixir has exactly that, and possibly my heart!

Room for Improvements:

There isn’t improvement I would suggest, but I do have a couple of pointers that if this were to ever be done again, that I would be a Karen and send to their suggestions box:

1. It was made to sound that I would be able to create an avatar for myself within the festival. Next time I hope this is the case. In Porter Robinson’s Secret Sky festival, we could have a coloured scribble and run around the festival. I had hoped TATW20 would be the same and it was a little disappointing to find it wasn’t.

2. Send the merchandise out sooner! They actually forget that Australia is far away, then add in a pandemic and postal services going AWOL, it was VERY touch and go at one point if I would even receive my bracelet in time. I have friends who didn’t receive their party packages before the weekend. This does dampen the excitement, you don’t spend all this money on bracelets and party packs for it to arrive the Monday AFTER the big weekend. Same goes with Treasure Chests every year - just send them sooner!

3. Let's never put Katy Perry on an EDM festival line up again, please and thank you.

4. Quicker drink lines… Or maybe that was just me and my bar… My bar host seemed like she was drunk, very unprofessional…

Did Tomorrowland Around The World blow my mind? Absolutely.

Will I pay money if they have to make another virtual festival again? Absolutely.

Will I cry if Australia won’t let me attend Tomorrowland 2021? Don’t even start me

I just want to take a minute to shout out to the people of Boom who will probably never read this but are a worthy mention. This festival is their life; if you’ve never been, then you wouldn’t know that they sit on their deck chairs on their front lawn with Tomorrowland flags attached to their windows waving to the busloads of countries piling into their community for 4 days of mayhem. Their Lidl store (think of Aldi) gets annihilated daily from the onslaught of people coming in to stock up on drinks and munchies. Their local chemists and doctors who deal with us lot when we’re feeling poorly and need something to keep us fighting for another day and 40k worth of steps.

When we are restricted from travel, we forget about these people who are really missing us at the moment. So, as much as I loved having a virtual edition this year and for the whole world to not be able to attend and help my FOMO big time, I cannot wait to be on the holy grounds in 2021 with my rave team, tasselled out from head to toe, ready to create some bloody epic memories. Because this festival is a no brainer in doing exactly that every time I arrive.