Video: Deep in the wilds of the Desert Hearts festival
In just a few years time, its team — five San Diego techno-weirdos (four twentysomethings and a gray-bearded paterfamilias almost twice their age) — has reimagined the idea of an electronic music festival in 2015.
In November, The Times took a long (and extremely cold) expedition into the wilds of Desert Hearts’ three-year anniversary festival.
Three thousand club music fans gathered in the woods an hour outside of San Diego for 100 nonstop hours of house and techno music, with all the weird and beguiling art, costuming and Burning Man-inspired structures that one might expect.
The fest also has something ineffable about it — a friendliness that could disarm even the most cynical music fans into believing in it. Maybe it was the sheer length and exhaustion, or the untempered enthusiasm of its founders.
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By the last days, it had established itself as perhaps the most pure fun any dance-music fan could have in Southern California.
The Times shot a short video documentary on the scene there, to show what 100 hours of house music — and fans completely off the cellular grid — look like.
The group brings its more urbane City Hearts festival to downtown Los Angeles’ Belasco Theater on Saturday. It won’t be quite as scruffy as its back-to-nature version, but it’s clear that the Desert Hearts aesthetic is only going to grow.
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