By Nicholas Merl
Yahn Dawn Music Festival, Friday, Sept. 18. (Nicholas Merl/Radio 1190)
This past weekend, Yahn Dawn Music Festival drew countless electronic music fans together in Buena Vista, CO, headlined by pioneering electronic group Pretty Lights.
Despite the throbbing bassline, the muscular thudding of electronic percussion and snarling synthesizers, Yahn Dawn feels more like a bizarre fever dream than a true music festival. Most of the crowd shows all the hallmarks of Raver veterancy. Homemade LED rigs flash from under boldly colored fabrics. Glitter in seemingly unlimited supply. People dressed like mushrooms and mushrooms dressed like people.
And naturally, the sprawling complex of parked cars and pitched tents takes 10 minutes to cross before you even reach the music. The sights along the way become progressively more surreal as you close in on the speakers blasting a cybernetic palimpsest of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow.” The lighting plays a decisive role, bathing the campgrounds in a prismatic haze that complements the event’s colorfully dressed denizens.
“There’s no better place to be in the mountains. It’s a killer venue,” John Solomon, a concertgoer, says of his experience. “And it’s great to just meet different people from different walks of life. It’s awesome.”
For many people here, it isn’t their first time at Yahn Dawn.
“ It’s my second year, actually. I was here the first year they did it when Bonfire was putting it on,” Dakota Tucker, another concertgoer, says. “I kinda like it this year a little bit more ’cause it kinda feels more concise. Like, everything’s together. Everyone’s more like family, if that makes sense.”
Artists pitch easels, chat with prospective patrons. Friday, Sept. 18. (Nicholas Merl/Radio 1190)
Everyone is friendly, if a bit preoccupied with doing their own thing. For a three-day concert, there is a surprising variety of ways people have decided to “do their own thing.” Of course, most people have pressed up against the stage, either swaying to the music or watching wide-eyed as laser beams mingle through explosions of multicolored fog. Another demographic has congregated further back, around the bars and restaurants. But between these polar ends of a spectrum, the field is overflowing with people who seem more concerned with absorbing the over-arching ambience than the music itself.
Painters have pitched their easels right in the middle of all the colorful chaos, steadily filling their canvases without paying much attention to the noise around them. Performers walk around in costumes ranging from the grotesque to the comedic. Then there are those who have simply chosen to relax, flinging themselves across the lawn in various states of consciousness, luxuriating amid the chaos.
Yahn Dawn attracted countless artists who gathered to create, share and sell their art. Friday, Sept. 18. (Nicholas Merl/Radio 1190)
The artistic bend of the Yahn Dawn crowd is on full display. Symmetry and color are an overarching obsession. “I think that a lot of people have a vision for what this universe should look like, and so everybody is a visionary,” Andrew Montez, an artist present at the event, says.
Montez himself carries a box of his own DIY jewelry around, proudly showing it off to anyone who lends him an ear.
“ I have created this jewelry that is a product of both mathematics and geometry, as well as influences from the past and the future. So there’s elements of cyberpunk, there’s elements of art deco from the 1930s, and there’s also elements of the geometry and mathematics from Ancient Rome,” Montez says. “I feel like at this festival, a lot of people will recognize my vision for what I think this universe could look like. I wanted to pick a piece of the fractal, that is the grander fractal of the universe. Picking a part of a single figment of it and then producing it in a reality that we can all perceive it.”
Andrew Montez claims he can take the impossible and make it possible through his jewelry. Friday, Sept. 18. Friday, Sept. 18. (Nicholas Merl/Radio 1190)
Other artists felt similarly inspired by Yahn Dawn’s eclectic atmosphere.
“ I tried to make this one where I bring in the grotesque, but I’m trying to keep the colors light and airy and fun, ’cause I feel like that’s just the vibe that Pretty Lights brings,” Madeline Nelson, a painter at Yahn Dawn, says. “ I try to take these more transcendental places and combine them with a more visceral experience to, like, bring them both together in, like, kind of a weird psychedelic way.”
Nelson’s art resembles a mix of Giger and Beksinski, merging strange bio-mechanical symmetry with vast, apocalyptic landscapes.
The ethereal meets the grotesque and erotic in Madeline Nelson’s art. Friday, Sept. 18. (Nicholas Merl/Radio 1190)
Between the various artists, various happy campers have strewn themselves across the ground in various states of consciousness. One of them suddenly bolts up, panic-stricken, looking for her phone. After a brief search, her male companion fishes it out of the mud and hands it over. The two then abruptly waddle-run into the night.
“In my mind it’s like the last hurrah before we have to go into the winter season where it gets, like, dark and kinda like, I don’t know… just darkness,” Tucker says.
There’s no mistaking that this is where Yahn Dawn is really happening. Not so much in the scintillating chaos of the pit or in the more laid-back haze of the tents. The middle ground, where people are just drinking it all in however they can, is Yahn Dawn.
Probably a good place to decompress after all that. Friday, Sept. 18. (Nicholas Merl/Radio 1190)