About this time three years ago, the environment for those in Las Vegas who wanted a scene outside of a bottle service heavy, extravagant club environment were a whole lot more out of luck than they are now. Instead of accepting this as the norm while waiting for EDC to close down on the speedway once a year, Marcel Correa, Christopher Kelley, and Daniel Jones created Ravealation to grow a scene for a greater scope of Dance Music fans.
This coming weekend sees the biggest show they’ve hosted to date: a two-night event at Hard Rock Hotel’s The Joint with Oliver Heldens, Ghastly, and Joyryde among others at the helm on Friday, and Excision bringing down the roof the night following along with Barely Alive, Party Thieves, and Protohype.
The first event that the three founders put together in December of 2013 featured the bass music stylings of Crizzly at the Hard Rock Live venue on the strip. Each year after that event reflected Ravealation’s progress, with Bro Safari leading a packed Brooklyn Bowl to a frenzy in 2014 and Seven Lions commanding a full house at The Joint in 2015.
“It’s like building blocks– you feel more confident making it to second base when you make it to first base. Starting small and moving up one venue at a time has put us at a comfortable rate of growth, that we felt good about.” Correa says.
Cutting edge Bass Music may be among the biggest shows they throw, but events in between the aforementioned Birthday parties include a slew of different lineups. House music themed Gravity nights that have given the decks over to DJs such as Drezo and Bingo Players, and their Apocalypto series has awakened the Hardstyle gene in several Las Vegans by hosting acts like Frontliner and Lady Faith.
Addressing as many styles of dance music as possible is central to Ravealation’s mission so that locals can enjoy their favorite artists without needing to spend gas money to go out of state. “If we only did Bass Music but you’re a House or a Trance fan, you have to travel,” Correa says. This coming 3 year celebration sees the promoter’s Bass N’ Trapment and Gravity Brands curating each separate night. In the coming future, he confirms that there are plans to create even more unique and genre specific lineups.
Beyond the huge events, Ravealation has also made it so that select Nickel Beer Nights(Tuesdays at Beauty Bar) are also a choice spot for fans to see individual artists on tour. The likes of Eprom, San Holo, and AC Slater have played the 5 cent boozefests in the past, and Ravealation’s own resident DJs also get a chunk of time to impress new fans with their mixing skills. For such a short time in the game, these three founders- and the slew of devout and hard working members of the Ravealation team- have several bases covered for enriching the dancefloors in Sin City with quality and quantity.
The city’s need for a dance music community is now well on its way to being fulfilled, thanks to the strides made by Ravealation to address more than just the VIP bottle service crowd. While they can’t reveal all of their cards on the second week of the year, a look at the track record of this company from partnering with Foam Wonderland, MLG and Life in Color to helping Insomniac kick off EDC week’s first ever official Hardstyle pool party, we’d say keep your calendar free in the Spring, the two seasons after that, and this coming month for their first Valentines Day event, XO.
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