What if a stage wasn’t only a place to observe dwell music, however a portal that pulled you proper into the center of it? That is the promise of Bonnaroo‘s new Infinity Stage, which can rework the pageant’s Centeroo environment in 2025.
The progressive stage, which Bonnaroo claims is “the world’s largest 360° spatial audio expertise,” will tower over the opposite six preexisting constructions within the pageant’s central hub. Nonetheless, Brad Parker, Competition Director at Bonnaroo’s organizer C3 Presents, describes Infinity is a “excellent additive” that may amplify the vitality with out altering the occasion’s course.
Parker paints an image of the open-air stage as extra like gasoline poured on an already roaring hearth, with digital dance music because the gasoline. He says the style is the biggest rising subculture inside Bonnaroo’s storied grounds at Nice Stage Park, underscoring its rising dominance in today’s festival landscape.
“The EDM scene of now could be very harking back to the jam band scene of the early 2000s, a quiet however highly effective underground tradition making waves throughout the complete scene,” Parker tells EDM.com. “Bonnaroo has at all times been about providing one of the best within the streets. It’s fairly actually the origin of our namesake. EDM is the most well-liked it’s ever been, and The Infinity would be the most superior manufacturing for soundscape now we have ever had.”
The inaugural Infinity lineup boasts a stacked lineup of digital acts, together with a uncommon collaborative DJ set from Of The Bushes and Tape B, who had been named to EDM.com‘s Class of 2024 and Class of 2025, respectively. It should additionally characteristic a extremely anticipated takeover by Specialists Solely, the model launched by dance music famous person John Summit, which was lately honored as 2024’s finest document label in our list of the year’s top industry leaders.
The following-gen stage comes from Polygon Reside, a famend music tech agency out of the UK. It should incorporate spatial audio and a completely synchronized, state-of-the-art lighting system to create a multi-sensory dwell audio setting the likes of which has by no means been skilled by festival-goers, Parker stated, citing Polygon.
“When Polygon Reside stated they may current audio to us at scale in a means that music pageant followers had by no means heard, in fact we had been intrigued,” he remembers. “The actual artistic course of comes by way of the programming itself and the artists we’re placing onstage. You’ll hear some once-in-a-lifetime performances from these artists on Infinity as a result of you might have by no means heard their music introduced fairly like this earlier than.”
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The phrase “immersive” has been overwhelmed into oblivion by the music trade, nevertheless it appears Infinity has earned the title. Polygon’s ambitions have gotten actuality as they develop the stage’s manufacturing, which can disperse bleeding-edge spatial audio throughout three large hemispherical domes.
“What we try to do with Infinity is to audio what the Sphere is to video,” Parker says.
He realized the exceptional potential of Infinity when he skilled a smaller model of its manufacturing at Thailand’s Wonderfruit Competition again in December 2024. Whereas it felt like dancing inside a state-of-the-art membership, Parker says he was really partying in the course of a discipline, fully swept away by spatial audio that “actually makes you’re feeling like you’re within the expertise, and never at it.”
Polygon Productions
Infinity may function a harbinger of the place Bonnaroo is headed sooner or later. The pageant’s crew, Parker says, will proceed to be taught, adapt and push the envelope as they embrace new applied sciences and alternatives to enhance the fan expertise.
He cautions, nevertheless, that evolving Bonnaroo’s onsite expertise should strike a cautious stability between experimentation and reverence for the pageant’s storied legacy.
“Bonnaroo is likely one of the few festivals that has had the privilege now to serve a number of generations of followers,” Parker explains. “Our greatest process is honoring and thanking these followers that acquired us by way of the primary 20 years, whereas additionally trying ahead to curating for the neighborhood of followers who will get us by way of our subsequent 20.”
“That is completed by paying modern-day homage to our jam band roots,” he continues, “with latest bookings like Goose, JRAD, Eggy and extra whereas additionally specializing in what the youthful technology is focused on, akin to Olivia Rodrigo and elevating our EDM programming. Life is all about stability.”
As spatial audio know-how quickly transforms music as we all know it, with even the inventor of the MP3 racing to revolutionize, Bonnaroo is discovering the candy spot between innovation and authenticity. True to type, the pageant is embracing the way forward for dwell music whereas staying true to its roots: huge azure skies, tenting camaraderie and the sort of communal vitality you possibly can solely discover on The Farm.
“Festivals will at all times be particular sacred locations and testing grounds for brand spanking new experiences,” Parker says. “There’s something a few pageant that may’t fairly be replicated in an area or amphitheater, and it’s our jobs to faucet into precisely what that is to remain contemporary and maintain evolving. There’ll at all times be a requirement for dwell music, and we hope to be on the middle of that craving.”
“On the finish of the day, we construct worlds and create communities. If we will do this, we win massive.”
You’ll be able to view the total lineup for the inaugural Infinity Stage beneath and buy tickets to Bonnaroo 2025 here.
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