Katie BainMusic festival schedules are such that you can never see everyone you want, because many artists are performing at the same time. But the Do Lab — whose Lightning in a Bottle event has just kicked off in Temecula — is soothing our collective angst with the release of a new Soundcloud series called In the Lab. It consists of electronic music set recordings from Do Lab events going back to 2010, including Lightning in a Bottle, The Do Lab Presents club nights in L.A., their annual stage at Coachella and last year's Great Convergence event in Egypt.
“Basically,” says the Do Lab's Jordan O'Neill, “we've been recording every single performance we've had since 2010.”
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They've got some four hundred performances ready for release, including notable sets like Beat's Antique's playing at the Pyramids in Egypt this past December. Almost two dozen recordings from Coachella 2013 make up the first In the Lab release, with featured artists including Kraddy, R/D, Henry Pope, Michal Menert and Jupi3r.
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So far, folks from all around world have logged on to listen and download, with a particularly heavy concentration of traffic coming from Canada, France and the United Kingdom.
Do Lab has so far resisted livestreaming their events, particularly Lightning in a Bottle, fearing doing so would take away from the experience of actually being there. With In the Lab though, O'Neill sees a way for fans to experience, and re-experience, events without compromising the actual party.
So far, most of the artists involved have agreed to the release of their sets, though a handful have declined because the recording includes as-yet unreleased material. While In the Lab is currently available only on Soundcloud, there is the possiblity of turning it into an iTunes podcast as well.
In the Lab will also eventually feature a companion series of spoken word lectures from Lightning in a Bottle's Temple of Consciousness, an area of the festival that hosts talks on topics including permaculture, astrology, health and economics. Think of them as Ted Talks designed specifically for the SoCal new age crowd.
Additional plans also include going into artists' studio spaces — their “labs” — for interviews and intimate lives sets. In the meantime, the Do Lab will release a few recordings every week until they've run out. With their enormous stockpile of music, this isn't likely to happen soon.
See also: Music Festivals Are Environmental Disasters. What can be done?
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