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Trance family from all corners of the globe reunited at Dreamstate SoCal the weekend of November 25th, 2016. Just like the year before, the all-trance festival organized by Insomniac Events made for something of a phenomenon – albeit for somewhat different reasons this time around.

That’s not to say any of the core components were missing. All of the hallmarks established in the greater Dreamstate brand’s inauguration last year returned, from both editions’ borderline utopian crowd energy to their expertly curated entertainment rosters. In recent years, the SoCal trance scene had practically been sentenced to obscurity while other subsets of the electronic music industry reached unprecedented peaks, but the second installment of Dreamstate’s flagship event once again provided just the experience the genre’s more tenured enthusiasts have longed for.

If this year was any indicator, though, the trance family’s youngest generation may be turning to the dark side.

The festival succeeded in many regards. Most significantly, it came much closer to creating an a full-scale “trance destination” like the one depicted in its flyers, social media posts, and even its beautifully rendered CG trailer.

Where the first edition’s performing artists occupied a single stage in the Damus building of the National Orange Show (NOS) Events Center in San Bernardino, Dreamstate SoCal 2016 consisted of four stages spread out across the grounds. Ornate installations endowed a futuristic chic in the walkways between each structure, and their distorted reflections danced in a pond between the entrance and the stages for the viewing pleasure of anyone seeking respite from the sometimes overwhelming production values.

As with last year, an overwhelming number of revelers unquestioningly got onboard with the vision. As outspoken a cynic as I’m known to be, even I can’t deny that I find myself compelled to behave more comionately upon entering Dreamstate. By what I’ve noticed from how the audience have interacted with one another this year and last, I don’t think I’m alone in that regard, either.

This year, in any case, it was near impossible not to find yourself captivated. A colossal, nearly 50,000 square-foot megastructure fitted with innumerable lighting fixtures billed The Dream saw such mainstagers as Gareth Emery and Andrew Rayel do their absolute best to deliver performances that would be received well by the hordes of trance purists in attendance – in addition to more seminal trance icons like Paul Oakenfold and Ferry Corsten (the latter of whom performed a set under his recently revived Gouryella moniker). Beyond that, the festival’s talent buyers spared no means in making sure that every shade of trance’s vibrant spectrum received ample representation across the time slots assigned to that stage as well as three others named Timeless, The Vision and The Sequence.

Not surprisingly, the defining moment of Dreamstate SoCal 2016 was easily the performance delivered on the second evening by Paul van Dyk. As I’ve been fortunate enough to learn firsthand, the global icon approaches electronic music with a rare sort of integrity that can be heard in every nuance of his creative process.

Of course, this year’s edition of the festival was not without its failings – most of which can be chalked up to growing pains that the Dreamstate brand was bound to have.

Tickets to the inaugural edition of Dreamstate SoCal had sold out within hours of going on sale last year – but in addition to proliferating the brand in a number of other countries in 2016, expanding the flagship festival into a four-stage mini massive may have ultimately overshot the demand of the event. The crowd appeared quite thin on the first night, and sources on the production side speculated that attendance may not have exceeded 15,000. While the second night’s figures nearly doubled those of the first, it’s safe to say that if Insomniac did somehow break even on this event it was by a narrow margin indeed.

Then again, given the intel at their disposal you have to wonder if Insomniac planned it this way. The organizers were surely aware that introducing alternative Dreamstate events in San Francisco, Melbourne and Mexico City would saturate the worldwide market (especially considering that the latter event took place this last weekend, only a week after this year’s edition of the SoCal event). Given the overnight success of the brand, it’s plausible to presume that they wanted to ensure that its flagship mini massive stood as monument to trance’s relevance in a post-EDM musical landscape no matter the losses incurred.

Insomniac’s Dreamstate has taken on a life of its own in the last year since its inaugural event in 2015, experiencing a surge of growth that has seen the trance dedicated brand expanding to a number of new locations. What started out as a single event in Southern California has now grown to a string of locations and upgraded productions, with New York and Australia getting their own editions of the festival. Now, Insomniac has revealed they will be bringing Dreamstate to Mexico at the end of the year.

Though Dreamstate touched down in Mexico earlier in the year at EDC Mexico with its own dedicated stage, the December one off show will serve as its first stand alone event in the country. The single day event is slated to go down December 3 at the Expo Sante Fe in Mexico City. The lineup has yet to be revealed at this point, but fans have come to expect only the best from the trance only festival.

As always, we’ll keep you updated as more info becomes available.

In case there was any shadow of a doubt that Dreamstate SoCal was a success, Insomniac Events has released a 2016 lineup that more than proves otherwise. Last year marked the inaugural edition of the all-trance festival, and this year’s roster consists of more than three times as many acts.

SoCal trance family will delight in the return of 2015 favorites such as Paul van Dyk, John O’Callaghan, Ace Ventura and Giuseppe Ottaviana – the latter of whom will perform alongside fellow “pure trance” advocate Solarstone as Pure NRG. MaRLo, Vini Vici and John Askew are among Dreamstate SoCal’s 2016 additions, as well as Infected Mushroom, who will perform a special psytrance set.

Once again, Dreamstate SoCal will grace the NOS Event Center in San Bernardino, California on November 25th and 26th. For the spectacle that it was last year, the festival’s organizers will surely allow photos of staging and other elements to trickle out to the public in the months leading up to the event.

In just a year since its inception, Insomniac Event’s trance festival Dreamstate has experienced a surge of growth. Following the inaugural event last year in Southern California, Insomniac has continued to add new destinations to their trance dedicated brand, branching out to the bay area and New York, while beefing up the stage productions at the San Bernardino edition.

Following up on those announcements, Insomniac has now revealed another new destination for Dreamstate, setting their sights on the international market to bring the growing festival brand to Australia.

Dreamstate Australia will take place as a one day event on October 1 at Melbourne’s Hisense Arena. The lineup will be announced Monday, July 25 at 10am, with tickets going on pre-sale the same day at 4pm. Regular ticket sales will then commence on Wednesday, July 27 at 10am.

Though the lineup is unknown at this point, based on previous events we can expect a roster stacked with the best and brightest of trance.

When Insomniac Events announced the addition of a Trance based festival to their brand last year, they probably didn’t anticipate the demand their new event would incur among dance music fans. Dreamstate has already enjoyed two successful events in California, as well as a number of standalone festivals and the recent announcement that the San Bernardino show would be receiving two additional stages this year. Now, Insomniac is gearing up to bring the Trance festival to the east coast.

This fall, Dreamstate will see its debut event in Brooklyn, New York. For its first event, the Brooklyn edition will feature a single stage, similar to the original San Bernardino incarnation. A number of DJs for Dreamstate New York have already been confirmed, with major talent like Markus Schulz, Infected Mushroom, John 00 Fleming and Astrix slated to perform.

The festival will kick off August 26 and 27 at Brooklyn Hangar, and tickets go on sale Friday, July 8 at noon PST.

Trance fans were rejoiced last summer when Insomniac Events, the promotional company behind such major festivals as EDC and Nocturnal Wonderland, announced their flagship American festival dedicated to the uplifting dance genre with Dreamstate. Now, details for Dreamstate SoCal 2016 have begun to surface, and the two day festival is shaping up to top last year’s event.

Following the announcement of a New York City based edition of Dreamstate, Insomniac has revealed that the festival’s SoCal event will once again be held at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, and is scheduled for November 25 and 26. While last year’s event only featured one stage, the 2016 iteration of the Trance festival will feature a total of three stages.

Tickets for Dreamstate 2016 will go on sale Wednesday July 27 at 12pm PST, and can be purchased here once they become available. There’s no word yet on the lineup, but we have no doubt that it will be packed with the biggest and best of Trance.

UPDATE: Sorry folks, it turns out that this was indeed just an April Fools joke.

ORIGINAL STORY: The trance family of Texas has a newfound reason to celebrate – although it looks like the news might have reached them a bit earlier than intended. Insomniac Events announced via the Facebook page for their rapidly growing Dreamstate brand that it will expand to Texas in 2016 before abruptly taking down the post.

A vigilant member of the Texas trance community named Jose Camacho managed to snap the following screen shot before the event’s organizers deleted the post:

Where both the SoCal and San Fransisco editions of the inaugural Dreamstate massives took place over two-day periods, the promotional materials reveal that the Fort Worth, Texas edition will span three nights: Friday, November 25th through Sunday, November 27th.

The surprising development arrives in the wake of Insomniac Events CEO and founder Pasquale Rotella’s recent announcement that neither EDC Puerto Rico nor Beyond Wonderland would continue into 2016, reinforcing his claim that the cancellations were not due to downsizing on the promotional company’s part.

It remains unclear why Dreamstate‘s organizers removed the post, but it’s safe to assert that the Texas trance family is in for a treat this fall.

If you attended Dreamstate this weekend, then you know you witnessed trance history in the making. The hard part will be explaining that to anyone who wasn’t there to see it for themselves.

For of SoCal’s tight-knit community of trance fans, though, the significance of Insomniac Events having green-lighted an all-trance festival requires no explanation. The fact that tickets sold out within hours of going on sale made for further cause for celebration – and even if you didn’t know enough of the scene’s history to understand why, you could still detect an air of relief in the smiles on revelers’ faces as they spilled onto the grounds of the National Orange Show Event Center in San Bernardino.

Attendees varying widely in age (and wearing correspondingly dated rave attire) ionately embraced each other upon meeting as though reunited following years of separation. Diehard trance fans are a decidedly more eccentric breed than their mainstream counterparts, and these ones in particular certainly didn’t go out of their way to act casual. To them, there was nothing casual about the occasion whatsoever – because at long last they would finally return to what the festival’s organizers dubbed their “trance destination.”

Upon entering the Damus Building and glancing at the stage inside, you could put to rest any remaining suspicion that Insomniac had skimped on production elements for Dreamstate. While the entire lineup would perform on a single stage, the sheer amounts of lighting, sound, CO2 cannons and confetti could easily have outgunned that of most multiple-stage festivals. An array of spotlights designed to swivel around into grid, starburst and column formations brought the futuristic structure to life, as though with every rolling bass kick it danced along with the audience carpeting the dance floor at its feet.

After the doors to the venue opened and ravers began to cluster together in front of the stage, the first artist stepped behind the decks to cue a song. While Day 1 kicked off with more melodic sets by Sunny Lax, Allen & Envy and Standerwick, pure trance movement poster boy Giuseppe Ottaviani began to incorporate more dissonant tracks and edits into his set – which complimented the increasingly striking visual elements of the stage. Then, shortly after Ben Nicky started his dark, grooving psytrance set, they broke out the lasers.

Emitted from the sort of array you would typically only see in use at a hardstyle show, multi-colored light beams fanned out in a criss cross of flickering planes above the awestruck faces of the thousands-deep audience. During points at which a menacing buildup reached its visceral peak, the CO2 cannons might all fire in unison, surrounding the stage in a formation of cloudy cones that resembled the treacherous maw of some enormous beast.

Dreamstate was clearly more than a reluctant concession to disgruntled trance fans. Insomniac pulled out all the stops to create an audiovisual spectacle that would revolutionize the way audiences experience trance music, and what they achieved was indeed a sight to behold.

Following Ace Ventura’s diabolical psytrance set, Orjan Nilsen took to the booth. Despite having received harsh criticism from trance purists for ing what they considered to be a betrayal of the pure trance sensibilities of the event, what he delivered during his set actually met with resounding approval from the ever-discerning audience .

The stylistic progression from artist to artist derailed somewhat for Paul Oakenfold’s Full On Fluoro set. Even though his almost house-y selection of songs made for a novelty departure from the psytrance that preceded it, it simply didn’t bridge the stylistic gap between Nilsen and Astrix in a natural manner – but still took the audience on a one-of-a-kind journey regardless. Indecent Noise closed out the evening with a crescendo of psytrance ecstasy, and the of the audience left in disbelief of their senses.

By daybreak, Dreamstate’s social media pages were already flooded with overwhelmingly positive from the first night. Negative testimonials from the festival arrived few and far between, with the attendees still trying to process what they took part in the night before. When doors opened on the second day, attendees arrived with even more excitement than they did on the first.

Dreamstate has been a hot topic among trance enthusiasts for months now. Insomniac Events announced the first edition of their all-trance festival back in June, and even before it has yet to take place in November they’ve already announced a Bay Area version for sometime in early 2016.

Without context this might seem a bit exuberant – but while it hasn’t occurred yet, Dreamstate has, in all the ways that matter, already proven a successful brand. Tickets sold out within hours, leaving innumerable trance fans in the lurch. Insomniac Events Co-Founder Pasquale Rotella took to social media to tell them to look out for another announcement before revealing that an additional Dreamstate would take place in San Fransisco early next year.

#Dreamstate2016 pic.twitter.com/CaaoVR01Yf

— Pasquale Rotella (@PasqualeRotella) August 31, 2015

If the lineup for the San Fransisco Dreamstate is anything like that of its SoCal counterpart, it will prove just as successful. Names like Paul Van Dyk, Orjan Nielsen and Simon Patterson gave the event a staggering draw, so it stands to reason that if comparable artists grace the roster for the Bay Area version then it will likely prove just as successful.

Check back for more updates on both versions of Dreamstate, including location/lineup announcements for the latter edition.

EDIT: Dreamstate will be put on by Insomniac Events alone, and not in conjunction with Motive Events.

Trance fans now have even more of a reason to feel uplifted than the invigorating music that makes up the soundtracks to their lives, as flyers for Dreamstate, an all-trance festival put on by Insomniac Events and Motive Events, could be found all over the streets of Los Angeles this past weekend. The only information available on the flyer was the dates of November 27th-28th, the general region of Southern California and the hashtags “#Dreamstate” and “#TranceFamily.”

In a post to Motive Events’ Facebook page, the company revealed that they would be working in conjunction with Insomniac on the event but revealed little else. Considering Insomniac’s usual attention to the full range of EDM genres, it’s safe to assume that each trance sub genre will be represented – artists who play pure trance, psytrance, Goa trance and others will likely accompany more mainstream acts on the festival’s lineup, maximizing the draw to make the event an internationally recognized spectacle.

Check out the flyer for Dreamstate below and tell us, would you venture out to see the debut edition of an all-trance festival put on by Insomniac?