Global Dub Festival made its iconic return this last weekend for the first rendition of Global Dance’s bass-focused gathering since 2019. This star-studded lineup brought some of bass music’s heaviest hitters to the Mile High City and topped the event with the largest laser show in Red Rocks Amphitheatre history.
The lineup truly felt like something out of a 2016 dream, and I for one could not have been happier. Steller kicked off the weekend right as the Miami-based dubstep producer showed off her talents and set the tone for the night. She has recently put out releases on MorFlo Records along with an insane Zingara collaboration titled “Find It In Your Mind” that welcomed the early arrivers to the madness.
DPMO Founder and U.K. legend Funtcase followed the rising talent of Steller by playing an early set on the Rocks while donning the iconic mask associated with his onstage persona. He proceeded to unleash a fury of chops and unrelenting doubles, creating a commanding presence defined by high-energy antics and crowd engagement. The party cranked up to 10 quickly into the night as the all-star cast of bass music’s biggest names began.
Global Dance also brought drum and bass royalty Andy C to Global Dub along with emcee Tonn Piper. Midway through the evening, the tempo sped up to an onslaught of broken beats. The genre change and switch kept the energy high and the crowd dancing to the beat of a new drum (and bass).
Andy C brought out vocal melodies to tracks like “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and even Fred Again and Swedish House Mafia’s “Turn On The Lights again…” to sway the crowd before unleashing the emphatic rhythm of drum and bass onto the masses. The audience had began to truly fill up at this point as the performers carefully crafted song selections to transcend the craving for a lineup of all dubstep.
Global Dance provided us with a very special guest on this year’s Global Dub lineup. The legend that is Flux Pavilion played us the sounds of his harmonic dubstep anthems and treated us to a flurry of unreleased collaborations. Flux has said he’s found a new passion and love for the old sounds of dubstep after embarking on the more melodic arc of his career, and those two worlds merged in his new rendition of his live set.
Opening the set, Flux brought Adventure Club to the stage to play out their newly finished collaboration followed by a live guitar rendition of Tiësto’s legendary “Adagio For Strings.” The U.K. dubstep icon continued the night tearing through VIPs of almost all the hit classics. The set was littered with unreleased IDs and collabs with artists such as Wavedash, Kill The Noise, Conrank, Doctor P, and Leotrix. It’s safe to say the creativity and innovation that for whic Flux Pavilion has always been known is at an all-time high.
This year’s headliners were absolutely eccentric. While both may follow very different approaches to the genre, Adventure Club and Zomboy wielded the caliber of bass music necessary to crumble the rocks around us this weekend. Accompanied by the largest laser show in Red Rocks history, Adventure Club delivered throwbacks throughout their set this weekend, creating some deeply emotional moments with the duo’s dubstep classics from their 2014-2016 era.
Adventure Club impeccably paired the emotional core of their discography with its more aggressive side. Delivering some of the heaviest-hitting tracks of the night, AC stayed true to the show’s name, mixing in copious amounts of neck-breaking dubstep tunes. As these heavy hitters complemented the incredible laser show that was on display, the crowd made audible gasps and screams rejoicing at the light show never before seen at this venue. Hardcore Adventure Club fans were on cloud nine as the Canadian pairing took the stage and added yet another legendary Red Rocks set to their resume.
Zomboy was the man to close out this top-tier lineup of bass music icons. The deathly beats of Joshua Mellody offered an over-the-top way to celebrate bass music in the Bass Capital itself.
Matching the energy of rabid Colorado dubstep fans, I expected nothing shy of pure chaos from start to finish from Zomboy and he came out swinging. Entering with insane stage presence and crowd interaction Zomboy brought the remaining energy out from the nearly capacity crowd. In front of his signature zombie and skull visuals, he closed out the night in a destructive fashion. This will go surely down as one of the heaviest curations of artists to grace Denver in one place this summer.
