With Ultra recently having been voted the best electronic dance music festival in the world (overcoming monsters like Tomorrowland and EDC Las Vegas), it's no surprise that dance music fans across the world wait anxiously for the live stream during the festival and full sets on YouTube when it's over. Every year, artists prepare for months to give the iconic Ultra crowd their best for an hour. Guest appearances, new tracks and breakthrough artists are showcased at Bayfront Park in front of millions of eyes over the course of three days. I'd like to share with you three of what I think were some of the most notable live sets of the weekend that may not have caught the attention deserved of most dance music fans across the world.
The Chainsmokers
The Chainsmokers have been making a lot of noise in the electronic dance community since their hit song "Roses" found its way to the top of charts everywhere and on the airwaves practically non-stop in late 2015 and early 2016. They opened their set with an awesome intro edit of "Roses" and proceeded to jump right into head banging "Game Over" by Lookas and Crankdat. This opening track set the standard for their electrifying set at the Worldwide Stage and they never slowed down. The rest of the set featured plenty of Chainsmokers classics like "Kanye," their "Dreaming" remix, and even a quick portion of "#SELFIE". When their set was closing they played a beautiful rendition of Coldplay's "Yellow" and closed the stage with their second most recent hit single "Don't Let Me Down," featuring Daya.
Carnage
Ever since Carnage broke through the electronic music scene with his popular remix of Hardwell's "Spaceman" he has built a massive fan base and earned the love of dance music fans everywhere with his sets all across the world. During Ultra though, Carnage caught the attention of the crowd by bringing out a solid amount of guests. The guests he brought out during his time slot on the main stage included Rae Sremmurd, Rick Ross, Marshemello, DJ Khaled, iLoveMakonnen, and Wiz Khalifa. Each guest had the crowd screaming and jumping for the entire hour he was on stage. He included his new remix of Blasterjaxx's "Soldiers," his classic festival remix of Hardwell's "Spaceman," and Junkie Kid's remix of one of Carnage's favorite tracks "November Skies." Grab your headphones and turn up the volume when you watch this one!
Dash Berlin
Having never seen a Dash Berlin set before I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this guy take the main stage in March. His second song of the set was a new remix of Lukas Graham's "7 Years" which immediately caught the crowd's attention. Many of the remixes or tracks that he played throughout his set had the crowd singing along so loud that I'm sure residents at the Intercontinental could hear. These sing along tracks included, the "7 Years" remix, Dash Berlin's "Never Forget You" remix, his "Sweet Dreams" remix, his "Seven Nation Army" rework, his "Beautiful Now" remix, his "Coming Home" remix, his debut remix of "Roses," (The Chainsmokers joined him on stage for this one), and his "Me, Myself & I" remix. All of these tracks combined with the way he interacted with the crowd made for my favorite Ultra 2016 set.
