Twenty years after Woodstock ’94, the fields of Winston Farm in Saugerties will once again come alive with the sound of music, July 11-13. The Hudson Project Music & Arts Festival will include 85 bands, mostly electronic, alternative and hip hop. Promoters MCP Presents expect 20,000 music fans per day.
Single-day general admission tickets cost $95; three-day tickets are $225 without camping, $255 with camping. Various packages with more amenities are also available. Parking fees apply, and most of the parking will be offsite, with free round-the-clock shuttles.
The lineup includes headliners Kendrick Lamar, Modest Mouse, Bassnectar and The Flaming Lips (pictured above), as well as: STS9, Moby, Big Gigantic, Excision, Atmosphere, Matt & Kim, Flying Lotus, Capital Cities, Rebelution, Bonobo, The New Deal, Dr Dog, Infected Mushroom, Holy Ghost, GRiZ, Lettuce, Paper Diamond, Tipper, Savoy, Twin Shadow, Nightmares on Wax, Cults, Bro Safari, ZZ Ward, Conspirator, Araab Muzik, Gold Panda, Emancipator, Flatbush Zombies, Kill Paris, Robert Delong, The Soul Rebels, Keys N Krates, Kap Slap, Yacht, Jon Hopkins, Luminox, Oliver, Tokimonsta, Kygo, Odesza, Kastle, Project 46, Thomas Jack, The Floozies, The Range, Marco Benevento Trio, Chrom Sparks, Audrey Napoleon, Twiddle and Tauk. (Visit Saugertiesx.com to hear selections from artists.)
Promoters and town officials say the traffic impact should not be greater than the Saugerties Garlic Festival, which also attracts around 20,000 attendees per day (over two days, not three). Festival traffic from the north will be routed to Exit 21 (Catskill) and approach from Rt. 32; traffic from the south will be routed to Exit 19, to Rt. 28, to 375, to 212, approaching from the west.
Go to hudsonmusicproject.com for tickets, parking, set times and additional info.
Kendrick Lamar headlines Hudson Project on Saturday
Compton’s own Kendrick Lamar, a young man tagged as hip-hop’s Chosen One by no less an authority than Dr. Dre, receives top billing at the upcoming Hudson Project Music & Arts Festival, his name nudged slightly ahead of such fellow headliners and indie-rock royalty as Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse. Lamar, in fact, has been headlining indie-rock and mixed-genre festivals pretty much continuously since the release of his justly ballyhooed 2012 major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d. city.
Maybe Kanye West better illustrates how pop megastardom and private-school indie culture credibility can be the same thing these days, but Kanye – beloved of the kingdom of Pitchfork and the kingdom of Kardashia – occupies a paradoxical position on the pop-culture spectrum, one that I call the Shatner conundrum: Is he hero or jester? Beloved or mocked? Laughed at or with? The magic is in the not-knowing.
Lamar has barely begun to fashion an identity-as-brand à la Kanye. What he has done is release an album of undeniable power, candor, effervescent intelligence and outlandish musicality. Good kid, m.A.A.d. city is a conceptual tour de force, a musical memoir of his Compton youth and its characters, broken up by lo-fi skits and street-life vignettes. Tracks range from harrowing and brilliant social commentary (“The Art of Peer Pressure,” “Good Kid”) to the blazing hometown-pride anthem of the album’s closer, “Compton,” featuring Dr. Dre, and all manner of urban confession in between.
Lamar embraces odd sounds, multiple characters with processed voices and bizarre, quirky production moves throughout, making him perhaps more of a kin with Flaming Lips than might be apparent at first. Good kid, m.A.A.d. city has found a receptive audience within and without hip-hop, and a lot of people will be watching the kid’s next move.
– John Burdick
Kendrick Lamar, Saturday, July 12, 10:35 p.m., Hudson Project Music & Arts Festival, Winston Farm, Saugerties; https://hudsonmusicproject.com.
Read on for Hudson Project spotlight on Dr. Dog, The ABCs of EDM, links to an interview with festival organizers and music samples of some Hudson Project bands.
