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As passionate consumers of the industry, oftentimes we don’t have the slightest idea what goes into the creation of our favorite lineup. Or festival. Or show. Anything really, because many times we sit back and are served a beautiful finished product, giving little thought about what it took to get to that point. It’s talent buyers who do the grunt work, and it’s them who are the brains behind a bill at your favorite festival.

In our mind, Madison House Presents is the gold standard in regards to lineup selection. Too often these days we’re faced with lame, repetitive lineups showing little to no creativity. Not this group of people though. One of their crown jewels, MHP is responsible for the insane, forward-thinking lineup at our beloved Electric Forest. It’s our favorite lineup of 2015, and it serves as no surprise that it sold out over four months in advance.

If you’re like us, you want to know what goes into something you hold so dearly. With a better understanding comes a better appreciation, and hopefully an overall sense of gratitude when immersed in the Forest come June 25th. Recently, we were lucky enough to speak with Lead Talent Buyer of MHP, Alicia Karlin. Touching on everything from lineup construction to The Festive Owl, take a look below and gain a better sense of what makes Electric Forest tick.

To kick it off, can you explain your role at Madison House? Sure! I’m the Lead Talent Buyer at Madison House Presents. I’m also the talent buyer for Electric Forest among other events, tours, and festivals that we do.

Would you say you get more enjoyment out of selecting the bottom portion of a lineup or choosing the headliners? Is there any difference? For me I’d say it’s a little bit of both. Because of the high amount of competition for the big headliners out there, that part is certainly more difficult. So it’s fun in that respect, trying to figure out the puzzle of it as we move along. It’s really fun rounding it out based on who you get as a headliner, then filling in the rest of the tiers to really make sure that it’s a diverse lineup. For us that’s extremely important.

Can you take us through the steps of booking an artist at Electric Forest? As soon as the festival ends, or really as it’s even going on, we’re already working on next year…finding areas that we can improve on. The week after the fest we’ll survey our fans, asking what they thought about their experience, what they enjoyed, anything they’d like to see next year etc.. Then really the fall is a super heavy booking time, that’s when we really ramp up the process. The past few years that’s gotten earlier and earlier when people start to book the top names. Many times it’s not even the headliners who get booked first, artists will get confirmed at different times. It’s all about piecing the puzzle together, we send out a lot of offers. It’s a very fluid process. A lot of this happens before the New Year, I’d say 50% of the lineup is set before January 1st.

As a talent buyer, how do “trends” affect your work? Do you create trends or do you react to them? I would say a little bit of both. I don’t know about “creating” them, I’d say the fans lead the way on that and are really vocal with us on what they want to hear and see. As I’m sure you know our event is really fan/community driven so we listen to them a lot and survey our fans. We have a really active community especially on Reddit and definitely take note of that, while also giving the fans some stuff they may not be expecting.

Speaking of unexpected…seeing names like Carl Cox, Claude Von Stroke, John Digweed, and Paul Okenfold on the bill blew my mind Yeah I think that’s going to be really cool. Especially with a guy like Carl, that’s going to be a great show and something that our fans haven’t ever experienced at our festival.

In regards to the Electric Forest lineup, how’d you cater it specifically to the attendees? What kind of fan and vibes did you have in mind when creating it?” I think our fan-base is very special in that they go to many different events. It could be very EDM-centric festivals or it can be very jam-roots type shows. What our fans listen to is extremely varied, it’s not usually one genre. We have a very wide demographic at the festival, it could be 25 year olds or it can be families. So we really try to have that show through in the lineup.

What’s Madison House’s relationship with Insomniac like? Specifically in regards to Electric Forest We’re partners and I feel like it’s a really great and special relationship. We work with them everyday on marketing and with social media, publicity, booking. Carlos Correal who’s the talent director at Insomniac, him and I work very closely and constantly exchange ideas and let each other know what’s going on. It’s a very open, strong relationship we have with them.

So on to Bassnectar…there’s a huge amount of hype surrounding his name being on the lineup this year. What made it time to have him back in the Forest? Bassnectar is a very special artist to us, he’s been a part of the Madison House family for a long time now. He’s really grown with us as a friend and family really. The time seemed right to have him back and everything just lined up, we’ve been talking about it for a really long time and had it in the works since last year.

With names like Bassnectar, Skrillex, Shpongle, EOTO, Kaskade, and Edward Sharpe the lineup really resembles the inaugural EF from 2011. Did you plan that or did it just happen to all fall into place? It wasn’t a plan, but as it started to come together that way we all thought it was really cool that 10 or so artists were back from the inaugural year. They all have new albums, new shows and we feel they each embody what the forest is all about.

How do you feel about lineup leakers? Specifically someone like The Festive Owl who correctly leaked 5 out of the 6 headliners. I think it’s a shame that people are trying to ruin things for everybody. Not only does it affect us with what we’re trying to do and how we do it, which is obviously very deliberate, but it affects everyone. To us it’s not a game, this is also a business, so I feel however they’re getting their information isn’t in the most kosher way. Honestly I feel other festivals were affected maybe even worse by it, having their entire lineup leaked. I don’t really feel like that’s doing anybody any good. It’s completely different than a more “organic” leak when sometimes an artist might confuse time zones and release information a day early…the intention is good but it was just an honest mistake. Those happen sometimes. What these leakers do is completely different though with someone who is intentionally mining for information, asking followers for lack of a better word to “hack” into private web pages before they get released. Which I found very funny because that specific site which the Festive Owl posted to Facebook wasn’t even where the lineup was.

To wrap it all up, what’s the most unique aspect of EF that you need to take into consideration when making the bill? Atmosphere, location, attendees etc. How does that differ from your run of the mill festival The forest is obviously a really special piece of it, and that’s one of the headliners of the show as you can imagine. There’s a lot of budget that goes into creating the Forest experience with the art installations. Even outside of the lineup we have artists from all over the world coming in and creating art for the festival and specifically for the forest. The Observatory Stage itself is created by really amazing architects. It’s a more asian themed area, the stage really extends all the way out into the forest and the crowd. The multi-layered tiers and viewing platforms kind of all add to the overall experience and bleed into the community.

It was great getting the chance to speak with Alicia and getting a glimpse of the inner workings of the industry. We’ll continue to track everything Forest related in the coming months and hope to see you all there! Just 101 days separate us from Rothbury.

Connect with Madison House:

http://madisonhouseinc.com/presents

https://www.facebook.com/MadisonHouseInc

Connect with Electric Forest:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricForest/

http://electricforestfestival.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ElectricForest

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