Excision knows how to throw one hell of a party. I’ve been attending music festivals at the Gorge since Ozzfest 2007, and Bass Canyon 2025 was easily the best experience at the venue to date. Not that I’ve had any particularly bad experiences out there, but Bass Canyon was an excellent music festival from top to bottom from my point of view. This was extra special because it was also the first time I’ve been invited to attend a major bass music festival as press.
Day 1
This was my first major festival as press in almost six years, so needless to say, there was rust and nerves I had to scrape off like old, faded paint. MP3 Public Relations handled all the press duties, and they made everything easy, and it definitely helped alleviate a lot of the nerves I had coming to such an important event after a long break.
I was lucky enough to sit down with Edison Cole, the brostep herald himself. He was an awesome dude, and we got to talk about his start in music, how he developed his digital persona Glitch, and how Excision gave him a massive break after a cold email. It’s safe to say Brostep is in safe hands with Edison, and I hope he gets to ride that wild horse one day.
Stage and Music Highlights
The Adventure Club sunset throwback set pulled all the nostalgic strings I was hoping it would. When they played Knife Party’s “Bonfire,” the wook came straight out of me just in time to walk over to the Crater stage to experience it at night for the first time. It took my breath away; those lasers will be seared into my DNA for as long as I live.
After my nerves were racked for hours on end and my workday drew to a close, my adrenaline dumped, and I fell asleep on the hill to the sweet sounds of Liquid Stranger and Of The Trees.
Day 2
Day two was a big one. I started the day by sitting down with drum and bass legend, KJ Sawka, and his production partner Allfires. He talked about what keeps driving him after all these years on top of the D&B scene. He also gave some insight into his record label Impossible Records and assured me that Destroid will never die.
Vampa and Jeanie (The Witching Hour) threw down on mainstage before they sat down to speak with me. We discussed their musical influences and creative process. They discussed how to stave off creative burnout and offered valuable advice to young artists who overthink their process.
Stage and Music Highlights
Mainstage was incredible all weekend, but day two had more than a few sets that blew me away. I’ve been away from the bass music scene for several years, so names like Cyclops and Zingara didn’t catch my eye right away, but good god, were both of them filthy. And Crankdat absolutely nuked that fucking stage out of existence. Know Good’s set has been stuck in my head for the entire week, and I have a hard time saying they weren’t the best set of the festival. The intimacy of the Starlight stage really stood out all weekend.
Bass Canyon 2025 Day 3
The creativity of the bass music community was on full display. From the attendees’ costumes to the artists music and graphics presentations. It was cool to watch other content creators do their thing. There is a lot of talented media people in the electronic music industry and it was helpful getting to see the different ways people approach their content.
Stage and Music Highlights
From the start, the energy on Sunday was on 10. Everyone came locked in and ready to soak in every last second of the weekend. Starting the day off with Vastive B2B RZRKT in the blazing sun of the main stage pit. That might have been the hardest set of the weekend and the mosh pit showed up. Shout out to all the dope people I met in the crowd during HVDES set.
Sullivan King and Excision B2B ATLiens provided an epic conclusion. All 20,000ish bass heads were locked in. The crowd was belting every lyric and everyone just felt so present, something that’s harder to find these days. It’s hard to see how they’ll top next year’s lineup, but I know they’ll try. We’re all already counting down the days.
