Arguably the party of the summer tore through Montrose Beach this weekend as part of the inaugural Wavefront Beachside Music Festival. World renowned names such as Duck Sauce, Boys Noize, Erick Morillo, and Eric Prydz graced the stage and took the Chicago crowd weaving through blistering techno, crunchy electro, and classic Chicago house tracks. Armed with disposable cameras and a cell phone, I attended both days and was blown away.

Pictures and more after the jump!

The energy and the locale of this festival were perfect. With the two main stages literally on the beach (seriously, how cool is that?), wavefronters (since this festival will probably become huge in the upcoming years, I figure ACITM coins the term first) were able to enjoy the music in their swimsuits with feet sinking in the sand.

The lack of popular dubstep acts filling the bill was probably the reason the crowd was less douchey and more friendly. When I attended Spring Awakening a couple weeks before, high schoolers and college kids were the 99%, and if you weren’t clad in neon head to toe you were either scolded or forcibly removed from Soldier Field. At Wavefront though, accidental bumps didn’t lead to all out brawls and the question “When are they gonna play Levels?” only came up once or twice. People were friendly, dancing, and seemed to be having a good all around time with thousands of strangers.

My only knock on the festival was the water situation. With temperatures exceeding 90 degrees both days, it seemed a little cruel to be charging 4 bucks a miniature water bottle. I would have loved to see a H20 refilling station similar to the one at Lollapalooza, and expect it next year with larger crowds destined to attend.

Fool’s Gold’s Duck Sauce, A-Trak and Armand Van Helden, closed down the festival Sunday night and were my favorite performance of the weekend. Both dudes have a hip hop background so the fusion of funk with disco heavy house tracks is grade A. Actually mixing live (a lost art nowadays right Deadmau5?) and playing dance heavy tracks, the crowd fed off the energy the duo was sparking and grooved along to the infectious, catchy tracks. As fireworks began to explode over Lake Michigan during the end of the Duck Sauce set, their hit “Barbra Streisand” blared through the speakers and people all around embraced in the magical moment. Even Armand and A-Trak seemed to take it all in for a second, raising their hands staring into the crowd smiling, knowing they were the exclamation point on a fantastic weekend on the beach. Til next year.

All photos by Michael Bojda

The coolest tank from the weekend

Shout out to Kodak for making some awesome disposable cameras still.