New Year’s in Dallas: Lights All Night Edition

written by Danny McColl Smith

photos from the Lights All Night Facebook

 It is always tough to try and depict words or pictures for a jaw dropping event afterwards. Destination: Dallas, Texas December 30th-31st 2016. The venue seemed something like a huge warehouse with a few rooms. The Market Hall was a perfect setting for Lights All Night and its thousands of ravers. It was a unique environment to send out an old year while welcoming a new one.


Music genre: EDM, house, dance, trance, rap, dubstep, trap, drum & bass

Camping: It was not camping so we stayed at a hotel a close UBER ride away from the Market Hall.

Capacity: Medium

Crowd type: Ravers. 18+

Water fill stations: Yes

For the first timers: It was my first time at LAN!

Standout Food: Various food trucks


Musical Highlights: Shoutout to the musical artists who helped bring this wonderful function together. The performances were a plethora of adjectives and feelings. Hype, divine, deafening, and tear-jerking are just a few to mention. A surreal airy feeling embraced the room during Above & Beyond in particular; especially when they remixed Moby’s Porcelain. Some DJs showed Atlanta love playing tracks like Bad and Boujee, Black Beatles, and Move B*tch. I was introduced to a few artists: Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (TEED), Felix Cartal, and Tchami (pronounced ‘cha me’ by the way). Low-key dope sets, glad I got to see their performances.

I briefly saw Zedd, A$AP Ferg, and San Holo. It was cool to bounce between deadmau5 and Cazzette. Kill The Noise for lack of better words, killed it. The New Year’s countdown with A-Trak was pretty epic. Heads Will Roll, yes please. RL Grime got real dirty closing Supernova Saturday.

Things to do: It was cool to chill in the outside area while not jamming to the music. Outside served as kind of a “break area.” Aside from just getting some fresh oxygen, there were food trucks, free water fill stations (not gross fountain water), and porta potties available. Nothing ever appeared too crowded which was a good thing.

VIP or nah: VIP was good for skipping long entry lines and inside concessions. The VIP crowd was calmer than the GA crowd so we interacted with the latter most of the time.

Story corner: I received a glowing sword from a passersby that helped land me under the center balloon halo for Above & Beyond. Group Therapy was breathtaking.

Mad props to the production team for generating such a well ran event. I spent the duration of both nights at Supernova (Main) stage but the other stages, Satellite and Silent Pyramid, were just as entertaining. Dancers in white outfits on stage added more eye candy to some sets like Cazzette; conductor hat was doing work pop lockin. Performances were on time with smooth transitions. The changeover between Kill The Noise and A-Trak for the New Year’s countdown was on point. The polychromatic assortment of lights was visually euphoric. Imagine your favorite color then BOOM! It is sprayed from the windows to the walls, sometimes in unison with various colors. I was digging the huge flashy disco ball above Silent Pyramid stage where they held Silent Disco. The balloon halos above the Supernova stage added extra animation to the room, especially once they took motion.

To the Dallas rave scene, I thank you. Not to undercut the work put into the huge Texas soirée but the people though…man. You could feel the surge of energy from the thousands of attendees as if we were ALL bright lights ourselves. Even as the crowds differed from Friday to Saturday we were all still in unison once a beat dropped. The human electricity personally helped me survive night one after the 800 mile long ride from Atlanta.

As expected everyone showed up looking good in their New Year’s rave attire. Glow stick bracelets, necklaces, light up shoes, and so on. I saw a few mini mau5ters, elaborate headdresses, Rodman, Irving, AI, Rick Sanchez, and even a gentleman wearing a suit. The outfits were impressive to say the least. People had their individual props to pair with their attire as well. There were hula hoops, poi, and LED gloves; all glowing or light up of course! Overall the event was a success. The Market Hall had enough space to accommodate the electric crowd inside and out. Everyone appeared safe and having an awesome time both nights. Food and water was easily available. The music was phenomenal. We even got confetti. It would definitely be a wise consideration for another New Year’s Eve. Better believe I brought in the New Year smiling, I hope y’all did as well. So thank you again to all the Lights All Night participants for the memorable experience. Good luck in 2017!!

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