It’s festival time and the stage is set for Sunburn 2009, Asia’s biggest electronic dance music festival to be held on 26, 27 and 28 December in Goa. The brainchild of Nikhil Chinappa and Percept Entertainment, Sunburn 2009 in its hat trick year has managed to draw a line-up of the best DJs this year, beginning with DJ Armin Van Buuren and Roger Sanchez.
What’s New :
DJ Nikhil Chinappa, festival director, Sunburn 2009, told AV MAX, “Besides pulling off the most amazing line-up that Asia’s ‘ever’ seen (with Armin van Buuren, Roger Sanchez, Sander Van Doorn and Gatecrasher) — Sunburn, this year carries the party off the beach with AfterDark — a new concept that carries the musical journey from the beach into a darker, deeper and more hard hitting sound for the night.” AfterDark will be held at a separate venue, which is walking distance from the beach venue. Shailendra Singh, joint managing director, Percept Ltd,was equally excited when we spoke to him. “We invested a lot in the first year. Our main aim was to get Sunburn noticed in India and abroad. It was necessary to get credibility from international media and artistes because the genre that we deal with is still getting popular. We also wanted to become a gateway for this genre of music because we knew it was coming into India and did not want somebody else grabbing it,” explained the co-founder.
Grand Preparations :
Talking about the elaborate preparations that began almost a year ago, Nikhil says “All these DJs have different styles, different stories to tell with their music and the way they present and play it. They will be backed by a sound system, lights, lasers, LED screens and decor that would be on par with any global festival from SummerDayze, Australia to Global Gathering, UK to Creamfields, Argentina.” What’s more, the audience this year will also be treated to some new evolving genres. “There is a focus towards introducing some tech-house this year - not the minimal variety, but the percussive, bassline and melodic synthsdriven variety. We have Jalebee Cartel from India who will headline one of the stages at Sunburn and joining them on various days will be James Harcourt (UK), DJ Sultan Greg, Pidcock (Canada), Josh Gabriel (UK), DJ Siren (San Francisco), DJ MMat (France), Marc Robijn (Holland), Vijay and Dominic (Chennai) and a few others,” confirmed Nikhil who thinks that Sunburn 2009 will put Goa and India firmly on the clubbing and festival map of the world.
What’s Ahead :
By next year Shailendra Singh plans to expand Sunburn to Dubai, Malaysia and Hong Kong as well. “The response we received from the audiences in the past two years has been outstanding. If last year’s economic downturn had not happened, we would have gone abroad too. We were in touch with Atlantic Dubai to host the festival in Dubai. In Asia, we are touring within cities to connect to audiences which we feel are Sunburn audiences,” he confirms. However, owing to diverse audience In India, they have created mini Sunburns. “We sample some good international artistes and then we promote Sunburn in terms of experience, and this is going to increase now - it is going to be a regular feature every month, the scale is going to go up because the idea is to make a community,” he promised.
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