Review | Surviving Vietnam’s Epizode electronic music festival: 11 days of gigs, 4am starts, 130 performers and 12,000 fans
- Epizode, staged for a fourth year on Phu Quoc island, featured international DJs and had a focus on sustainability
- As well as the music, festival-goers could experience meditation, yoga, gong baths and art installations including video art
Vietnam’s annual Epizode electronic music festival is not for the faint-hearted – a mouth-watering selection of international DJs perform over 11 full days and nights.
While many of them can usually be found playing in dark nightclubs in cities such as Berlin or Detroit, Epizode instead presents them on stunning stages spread along Long Beach on Vietnam’s sunny southern Phu Quoc island, which is rapidly becoming one of Southeast Asia’s tourism hot spots.
The most recent instalment of Epizode – which ran from December 27 to January 7 – was the fourth edition of the festival to be staged in Vietnam, and featured 130 artists performing over four stages. The event attracted 12,000 music fans from 96 countries, according to the organisers, showing the very millennial trend of music festival tourism is alive and well in Asia.
A number of the biggest names in modern electronic music – including Detroit techno and house pioneers Carl Craig and Moodymann, and Germany-based DJs such as Ricardo Villalobos and Loco Dice – made appearances on the festival’s four stages.
Experiencing the event to the fullest makes for a long haul. “If you buy an 11-day ticket to Epizode, you’re coming for a real 11-day festival where music is always playing, and you are able to sleep and wake up whenever you want and you are always going to find music that you like,” said Epizode CEO Natasha Rogal.
