Amped up (and still recovering) from the previous day’s marathon of dancing. We couldn’t wait for what Day 2 had in store. Primarily because of the 2 new properties that Sunburn introduced, the Smash The House stage and the Afterburn stage. The former, as the name suggested, was purely hard, floor destroying, and foot-stomping house music, headlined by none other than the pioneers of festival music, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike. The latter, was purely dedicated to the underground face of dance music. Primarily deep house, tech house and techno. This was headlined by the head of one of the world’s finest and most exquisite deep house labels, Drumcode, none other than Adam Beyer.

Smash The House (Space Jungle Stage)

True to the brand’s historic expectations,the Space Jungle Stage was stupendously done with massive green space animals like rabbits and giraffes and other wood worthy creatures. The lights and visuals were exceptional with DJ Clement spinning his magic beats to the already raving crowd. ‘Eat.Sleep.Rave.Repeat‘ by Fat Boy Slim, this year’s dance music anthem sent the crowd into an immediate frenzy. As people slowly started to pour in, we could feel the energy changed and intensified to a whole new level. Clement also pulled out a lot of the crowd favorites like ‘You make me‘ by Avicii and followed it up the infamous dance floor banger, Martin Garrix & Jay Hardway’s ‘Wizard‘

‘Chasing Summers‘ by Tiesto made it presence felt on DJ Clement’s console. The crowd went berserk went they heard this one get dropped. It turned into a vortex of dance music favorites as Clement dropped ‘I Love It‘ by Icona Pop. An unusual and yet interesting track was Bad DJ’s ’Promise Land’.The crowd matches Clement’s pace and versatility as he managed to swoon the track with numbers like ‘Coming Home‘ by Dirty South and Florence & The Machine collaboration with Calvin Harris’s Sweet Nothing. Finally to pull in a romantic flavour to the mood, Clement spun the Cedric Gervais remix of  Young & Beautiful‘. DJ Clement had done his job, and had gotten the crowd warm and absolutely riled up for Tom Staar.

One of the fast rising talents of the EDM fraternity, Tom Staar took to stage and the crowd became uncontrollable. They screamed, they shouted, they rejoiced as, Staar introduced the crowd to the wonders of an electro bootleg of Michael Jackson’s ’Mama Say Mama Say Mamakossa’. The ravers by this point had reached the zenith of their energy scales and were gearing up for a few hours of heavy hot stepping. As the MC announced magnificent titles to Tom’s name including his collaborations like Axwell, Swedish House Mafia, Pete Tong, Afrojack, the crowd watched star struck and then jumped as one singular unit into the air to welcome him into Mumbai’s madness for the first time. He played ‘Sound Of The Underground‘ by Nicky Romero, Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano vs  ’Jack’ Breach and churned out another Romero remix of Green Velvet’s “Flash“.

As he pumped his fists in the air and drank water to cool off crowd seemed unstoppable with an abundance of inexhaustible energy as they danced to tracks like Bingo Players- ‘Rattle‘, Calvin Harris feat Ne-Yo – Let’s Go (Swanky Tunes & Hard Rock remix) and ‘Greyhound‘ by Swedish House Mafia. A ‘Zombie Nation‘ mash-up and a Don Diablo track titled ‘Starlight‘ only seems to bring a smile on everyone’s face including Tom’s. As the crowd clapped, jumped and danced, Tom showcased his console prowess by playing ‘Antidote‘ by Knife Party and  an ‘Animals vs Project T‘ mashup. As the pace began to wind down and the crowd hummed along familiar tracks like ‘Green Velvet & Harvard Bass’s ’Lazer Beams‘, Nari and Milani’s ‘Atom‘ and finally killed it on the dance floor with Tommy Trash’s ‘Monkey See Monkey Do‘. His own latest number ‘Staars‘ was another acclaimed track which he played at the Space Jungle stage. He closed his phenomenal set with the likes of party favorite; Tommy Trash’s remix of Steve Aoki’s Ladi Dadi and Audien’s remix of Treasure.

Next up on stage was Belgian powerhouse artists Wolfpack. Acquiring fame and fortune rapidly, they took to the stage with massive applause ringing. It seemed quite obvious that from now on, we could only expect hard-hitting dutch house and boy, did Wolfpack deliver! Taking on the crowd headfirst, they dived right into it unleashing Ummet Ozcan’s ‘Here & Now‘ mashing it up with Duck Sauce’s ’Big Bad Wolf’. Gradually progressing with every beat, they slowly but surely eased into Calvin Harris’ ’Thinking About you‘ and Bakermat’s ’Vandaag’.

From then on, things got way more aggressive, and Wolfpack had reached that sweet spot. Dishing out massive hits such as ‘SLVR’ by Steve Angello & Matisse & Sadko, they went on to to drop Hardwell’s edit of Blasterjaxx’s ’Fifteen’ and their own remix of Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike’s ’Wakanda’. Keeping things interesting, and not too monotonous, Wolfpack’s change ups were more than impressive. Just when the tempo got too high, they slowed things down by introducing the audience to Kaskade’s beautiful ‘Atmosphere‘ and Don Diablo’s ’Starlight (Could You Be Mine)’. This made everyone feel the love around them, and was a welcome break from all the stomping and fist bumping.  Mixing it up a little, they also dropped Hardwell’s remix of Mark Knight & Funkagenda’s tune ‘Man With The Red Face‘ along with Kryder’s ’Aphrodite‘. With the change-up in tempo complete, Wolfpack was all set to finish off the crowd once and for all. Going on a rampage, they dropped all the infamous dance anthems, some of them being Nervo’s ’Like Home’, Hardwell’s remix of Krewella’s ’Alive’, as well as a few older bangers such as Hardwell’s ’Apollo’ and the Otto Knows remix of ‘Lies’. Wolfpack’s mission was successful and it was time for the showstopper Tomorrowland duo to take the stage.

The infamous Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike got on to the stage in true rock star fashion, with the crowd screaming out their name, it was time for the highlight of Day 2′s line up, and people were brimming with ecstasy. Keeping in theme with the stage,  they started off with their own acapella of ‘Smash The F***ing House‘, they immediately upped the tempo unleashing mayhem with W&W’s remix of ‘Live For The Night’ by Krewella and their very own TomorroWorld anthem ‘Ocarina‘. The crowd had absolutely lost control of themselves, as the Belgian duo mashed up anthem after anthem, without giving the crowd any sort of breather whatsoever, it was madness alright! Dishing out magnanimous hits such as Calvin Harris‘ ‘I Need Your Love‘, these two swooped right in to unleash tracks such as Fedde Le Grand’s remix of Coldplay’s ‘Paradise‘, ‘Tsunami’ by DVBBS & Borgeous to name a few. The energy during their set was unmatchable. They had such a huge crowd there wasn’t room to move. Everyone however, still managed to enjoy themselves to the hilt. As soon as you walked to the stage you could feel the spark of extremely high octane energy around.

It definitely seemed like Dimitri and Mike had brought their A-game to Mumbai, as they decided to pull a fast one over us! Just when we thought everything was going the Dutch house way, they decided to infuse a little rock n roll! Surprising us all with an acapella of the infamous ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen, they kept the rock theme going for a bit longer, unleashing the classic ‘Can’t Stop‘ by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, albeit with a filthy bass-enthused Dutch drop! With the rock lovers at peace, they decided to do what they do best, and that’s where hard-hitting Dutch bangers made their stand. With massive singalongs already been achieved time and time again, it was no different here, when they dropped Alvaro’s ‘Welcome To The Jungle‘ and their own remix of Major Lazer’s ‘Watch Out For This (Bumaye).‘  They even put on a stellar show by interacting with the audience and popping bottles of Champagne! Having surpassed all expectations, these two managed to cheer and infuse audiences with unforeseen energy levels, and their tunes just couldn’t disappoint. The audience jumped, danced, stomped and even took their shirts off at one point!  The hype that surrounds these two is undoubtedly true, a truly stellar set put on by these two.

The second day on Stage 2 wasn’t an ordinary experience. Sunburn launched their fresh and innovative Afterburn brand as Stage 2 was going to be all about those slick and smooth vibes of deep house, tech house and techno sounds. Creatively entitled after the musical styles you experience to retrofit your body and soul to the magical sounds of underground music, Afterburn was a bold initiative as even the stage banner was altered for the first time as that familiar “SUNBURN” title was replaced. Indian DJ’s such as Kohra & Jitter and the extremely talented Arjun Vaghale were flanked by the legendary Josh Wink and the mastermind Adam Beyer. The musical styles of this day transcended anything the city had ever seen before as the portfolio of music open to choice was as wide as ever experienced before. Where one stage was dedicated to “smashing the house”, the other promised the perfect remedy for some soul-searching and spiritually uplifting sounds! Kohra & Jitter kicked off the Afterburn brand with a smooth and delicious tech sounds. Under the presence of some spectacular visuals, the duo curated a set of wonderfully composed symphonies as tracks like Pig & Dan and Mark Reeve’s ”Origami”  and the mystical, eerie “Bolero” by Dusty Kid  just set the tone for bigger things to come in the night. As the sun dipped and a cool breeze kissed our torso’s, magical melodies from ”False Widow” by Reset Robot  and ”Tegno “ by Egbertmade us smile and spread our arms as the pure sounds of deep house music made the Sunburn Festival an increasingly unique experience!

Next up at the Afterburn stage was the supremely talented Arjun Vaghale. Known for his consistently alluring performances and fantastic mixes, Arjun’s set at Sunburn was nothing short of magnificent! With melodic tunes such as “Stranger “ by Marcel Dettmann and “Bloody crush“ by Marco Carola, Arjun Vaghale’s set got everyone present groovy. His set was wonderfully composed in energy as time and again he would build up transitions with tracks like Santé & Sidney Charles’s ”Blow “  only to let tracks like the vocal edit to  Jamie Jones’s ”Summertime” bring everyone back to a state of calm and composure. As the sun began to dip below the horizon and the warm sounds of ”Someday“ by Ross Evans came to our ears, Arjun slowly but surely reinstated the fact as to how techno sounds can be as pure and contextual as the earth we were stomping on.