The hills of Pink Rocks could not have eyes, however on this evening, they’d ears.
Of The Bushes just lately took over the long-lasting Colorado venue for a career-defining efficiency on November sixteenth, after we skilled the uncompromising power of a generational artist coming into his personal.
“I never imagined taking this project as far as I have,” mentioned the DJ, whose actual title is Tyler Coombs. “I have always had dreams of being a rock star—ever since I was a little boy, but I’m not sure I ever really grasped what that could mean.”
Coombs in 2021 based Reminiscence Palace, an modern file label the place artists are invited to push boundaries and create phantasmagoric beats that linger in our consciousness, like vivid goals we won’t fairly shake. There’s an underlying philosophy of music as a type of ecological dialogue, the place the label’s sounds can talk deeper truths about interconnectedness.
That is precisely what occurred to the sold-out Pink Rocks crowd, a gleaming sea of puffer jackets and neon beanies who moved like they had been bewitched as lasers sliced by breath seen within the icy mountain air. We weren’t simply watching—we had been being rewired.
Over 6,000 ft above sea degree, the dreamlike live performance bowl whispered its normal guarantees of grandeur. However this time, it wasn’t simply its monoliths talking—it was Of The Bushes, whose sensory sorcery breathed life into the storied amphitheatre and wove its historical past by nature’s exhale.
Coombs, who doubled down with one other efficiency the next evening, debuted a surprising new stage manufacturing, DJing inside an illusory cabin developed by Darkish Moon Designs. The modular construction, the studio mentioned, is an aluminum construct with wooden cladding, dense forest foliage and a rusted roof.
Channeling the surrealist whimsy of The place the Wild Issues Are by a rave lens, the cabin became a bioluminescent beast earlier than our eyes.
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Inside, an LED display screen crackled with timeless woodland allure, typically projecting visuals of an vintage chair glowing within the amber gentle of a stone hearth.
Exterior, LED screens behind and beneath the cabin’s beams palpitated with primordial visuals of molten sunsets, shivering tree limbs and blooming ecosystems of fractal flora.
Designed by Alec Maassen, the gorgeous visuals typically veered into the darkish as properly. One second you had been cocooned within the arms of Mom Nature, the subsequent you had been questioning whether or not you have stumbled right into a secret forest coven convening below a full moon.
If the cabin was Of The Bushes’ sanctuary, the music he performed was ours. Each snarl of distorted bass felt like the encompassing forest growling again, shaking its roots and dancing with us.
We heard a plethora of unreleased bangers, together with a nasty entice monitor with the surging LYNY and a chic track Coombs produced alongside the late CharlesTheFirst, who in 2021 tragically died on the age of 25.
Coombs additionally fluidly threaded his hip-hop influences all through, creating moments of liquid grace amid the barrage of woozy entice and bass music. An plain spotlight was when he performed an unreleased collaboration with the Grammy-nominated EarthGang duo, whose signature mix of Southern grit and cosmic lyrical curiosity feels prefer it was written within the stars for Of The Bushes’ sound.
that new @OfTheTrees X @EarthGang 😮💨😮💨😮💨 pic.twitter.com/5ZibtAgaXR
— liz🪼 (@lizzyseitzinger) November 17, 2024
Regardless of the spine-chilling complexion of his set, Coombs is a DJ with the soul of a wandering poet. It was clear why the EDM.com Class of 2024 breakout has emerged as one of many digital music scene’s most gifted storytellers, a fame he is attained by hard-won authenticity reducing his tooth as a humble producer and visible artist within the frigid plains of Maine.
Probably the most human a part of the evening, nevertheless, wasn’t the music or the visuals—it was the artist on the helm. Of The Bushes, typically silhouetted in opposition to his otherworldly cabin, paused continuously to take all of it in. Every look he forged throughout the amphitheater spoke volumes—disbelief, gratitude, pure unfiltered pleasure.
His grin, unattainable to overlook, mentioned what bushes by no means may: this was the dream.
“I looked up at the silhouettes of the famous rocks with my logos on them, at the several thousand faces staring back at me, at all of the stars twinkling in the chilly November sky—and it all hit me super hard,” Coombs gushed. “We’re actually doing this shit.”
Fans can now catch Of The Trees on his North American tour, “Moonglade.” Tickets are on sale here.
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