Midweek Mantra Mix 022: LuSiD metamorphoses at Burning Man

Wednesday is humpday, which not only marks the halfway point between the work week and the coveted weekend, but also Conscious Electronic’s Midweek Mantra Mix (M3). We’ve been scouring the web’s most enlightening bass music mixes that align with our vision, to provide “a conscious way to consume dance music.” M3 spotlights both veteran and up-and-coming bass music artists whose music seeks to raise the vibrations of their collective listener base.

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Known for experimental sounds and his fresh take on live looping during performances, rising producer LuSiD is making waves in the scene. Often featuring live instruments mixed in with his electronic sound, a funky blend of hip hop, psychedelic bass, dubstep and many other groovy genres pour out of the speakers every time he performs. With several appearances at the recently-concluded Burning Man, LuSiD is rapidly solidifying his place in the world of music.

Achieving notoriety with 2018’s remix of the instantly recognizable Desert Dwellers track “Saraswati’s Twerkaba,” LuSiD has been able to perform and collaborate with some impressive artists in the past year. Even the aforementioned remix was a collaboration with fan-favorite CloZee. As time has gone on, bass music fans are beginning to recognize him as a powerful creative force.

Burning Man is a celebration of all things wild, creative, and free, and this year’s event was no exception. Eschewing any and all corporate influence, attendees are asked to participate and contribute to the creation of the event–other than the actual burning of the giant wooden man statue on Saturday night of the week-long celebration, the organizers don’t set up or book any music themselves. Instead, various camps host artists at their whim, which leads to some interesting combinations of artists and stages. Sometimes, huge artists play tiny stages, and lesser-known artists play on the largest platforms inside the event, and often seemingly at random.

It is this environment which makes Burning Man such a different event from any others in the music festival world. In fact, one of the core tenets of Burning Man is that it is not a music festival, and the leadership of the organization makes that explicitly clear before you ever get a ticket. Famous musicians are merely participants in the event, like everyone else, and there is no official top-down structure keeping them separate from the rest of the event’s attendees. Combined with the harsh, edge-of-the-world feeling from being in the barren Black Rock desert, as well as the constant threat of insane dust storms, and you have a recipe for legendary musical expression to take place.

Forged under the heat of the blazing Nevada sun, born of the barren wastes and the infinite variable expression of the human soul, LuSiD performed a set that encompassed all the randomness and raw beauty of the spirit of Burning Man. Featuring plenty of funky instrumentation and even the signature desert sound of the slide guitar, he expertly takes the listener on a journey through funk, dubstep, trip hop and back again, during an epic dust storm. It’s a set that will have you scratching your head and stomping your feet, and asking for more when it’s all over. If you missed Burning Man this year, it’s a good time to start planning for next year, so you can experience that special brand of desert magic.