On one of Phú Quốc’s many beatiful beaches, thousands of ravers from across the world dance the morning, afternoon and night away to world-class dance music. Peter Cowan reports from Epizode festival.

As you make your way down one of Phú Quốc’s many long, dusty roads towards one of its multitude of resort complexes, the vibrations begin, subtly at first.

Before long, you can clearly make out the sound of kick drums, hi-hats and overwhelming, moody bass puncturing the air, sucking the breath out of your lungs for a moment before it returns, charged with nervous energy.

After walking down a winding path affixed with red flags atop it, like an upside down red carpet, you enter Epizode festival, and go through the looking glass.

Everywhere you look there are ravers of every shape, size and colour, bedecked in costumes that transformed them from mere partiers to sailors, devils or beings made completely out of gold.

Those ravers are milling around and dancing in an otherworldly setting, with, huge glowing jellyfish and giant nón lá (conical hats) by the beach, to one monolithic stage that looks more like a cathedral than a DJ booth, to another stage that looks like an enormous frisbee, as if a giant had left it on the beach aeons ago.

All the while music pumps out from all four stages, each a different strain of dance music, beckoning you to give in to your primal urges and dance until the sweat cascades down your body.

This feast for the senses could be overwhelming, too intoxicating for the eyes and ears to handle, but Epizode is your playground, a choose-your-own-adventure festival.

You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Meeting of cultures

Held on Phú Quốc Island in Kien Giang Province, Epizode festival returned for its third edition at the Sunset Sonato Beach Club in late 2018. Running from December 28 until January 8, 2019, the festival yet again brought a world-class line-up of international acts to Việt Nam.

With four stages and music playing on at least one of them throughout the entire festival, there’s no question Epizode was the equivalent of any raver’s wet dream. Whatever form of underground dance music you were into, it was there, from drum and bass to progressive house and techno, and practically everything in between.

However, there was no doubt Sagrado Corp, the Moscow-based organiser of Epizode, could put on a great party with big-name artists. They’ve been doing it for years in Europe and for the last two in Phú Quốc. The festival’s goals were loftier, aiming to help grow and bring together Asia’s dance music scene, which has largely been dominated by EDM in recent years.

Artem Harchenko, Epizode’s general producer and a DJ under the stage name Tyoma, said at a press conference on January 6 that he reckoned the festival had achieved that

“For me personally, it’s that moment when you walk into the venue and listen to the mixture of languages and mixture of people I am really happy to see that. I was the happiest person on New Year’s Eve because it was a huge amount of different people.”

He wasn’t wrong, as the festival was filled with partiers from across the continent and Europe, a far cry from the first edition that was reportedly mostly attended by Eastern Europeans, something incongruous with the Asian setting.

Another goal from the previous year was to diversify the range of electronic music genres and move away from the perception of Epizode being a techno dominated festival.