FVDED 2025: A Festival Balancing Legacy and Discovery
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After a landmark rebirth in 2024, FVDED’s sophomore pure EDM venture was a success. It may never recapture the high that last year delivered—a perfect confluence of rising stars and true legends—but 2025 settled into what I can only hope is the event’s new normal moving forward: a finely curated balance of golden-age icons and genre-diverse artists you should be listening to.
For aging ravers with expendable income still flourishing in the scene, FVDED is where discoverability meets nostalgia. A trip well worth the post-festival exhaustion.
To move past the event’s shortcomings: sound in the Northwest Tent wasn’t loud enough, and you had to be in the exact right spot to avoid bleed from the other stages. This was a problem in 2024 too, and it’s largely the result of hosting a large-scale event in Holland Park—it’s just not big enough. Maybe the stages can be shuffled further, but the issue will likely persist.
Still, FVDED’s location is also one of its greatest strengths. Every stage outside the mainstage feels intimate. Experiencing acts like Disclosure, RL Grime, Rudimental, and Lane 8 at the Forest Stage and Northwest Tent felt like a rarified experience for artists of their stature.
Outside of sound issues, there were times when the mainstage lineup lacked flow—HoneyLuv into Juelz, for example—especially when stacked against Day 2 at the Forest Stage or the Northwest presented by Foundation, both of which were arranged to near perfection.
Highlights:
Any festival you can walk away from with new heavy rotation additions to your playlist is a huge win. Shoutout to D.O.D, Goddard, Rudimental, and Levity for all entering the pantheon of Spotify mainstays.
D.O.D was the first must-see artist of this year’s FVDED. Day 1, 5:30 p.m., and the Northwest Tent was already wildly overflowing. His unreleased remix of Sweet Nothing—which Harris has been rinsing in Ibiza—was pitch-perfect for a hot summer afternoon. Even with a tight hour slot, the set built and progressed, culminating in twenty minutes of pure house euphoria.
Zingara has mastered chill-meditative bass. Torrents of low-end BPM washed over a transfixed audience, and I expect her to rise up festival ranks in coming years.
RL Grime brought mainstage headliner energy to the Northwest Tent and had the crowd feral from the first drop. As one of trap’s early pioneers, his prowess hasn’t faded—resurrected, the golden age of EDM was alive and well during his set.
Rudimental may have been up against Tiësto, but the Forest Stage was where the real ones were. Memories of Chase & Status’ 2024 set came rushing back: the camaraderie, the energy, the fandom. By the time Alibi hit, it was a fever pitch. You could feel the broader tides of EDM in North America shifting in real time. We may be extremely late to the party, but DnB is gaining real traction.
While Day One certainly had its high points, Day Two dwarfed FVDED’s initial offering. Goddard into Levity at the Forest Stage was S-tier programming. Combined, they brought headliner energy early in the day. Goddard delivered elegance and musicality elevating drum & bass in a manner rarely achieved. Levity, though relatively new, are clearly following in the footsteps of artists like GRiZ and Zeds Dead—and I have full faith their following will explode in the years to come.
Loud Luxury are always big, dumb, accessible fun—and this year, they may have outdone Tiësto at his own game.
Subtronics, the reigning king of dubstep, obliterated the mainstage—and my expectations. It was absurd, abrasive, riddled with in-jokes for his diehard fandom, and a pure celebration of the current state of dubstep. Maybe the most important ingredient to the set’s success? The crowd. Easily the biggest I’ve seen for this kind of show—and everyone around me was completely locked into what he was throwing down. The fact that all his merch sold out the day before said it all: people were all-in.
All of this without mentioning the most egregious set conflict of all time: Subtronics vs Disclosure. Turns out, if you’re committed to sprinting between stages, you can experience cavity-shaking bass and groovy-buttery house simultaneously. My legs still hurt. Worth it.
The last time I saw Zedd was at FVDED 2016. I left underwhelmed—his set felt basic and predictable, especially after Jack Ü the day before. Fast-forward nine years, and those same qualities are recast in a new light. Zedd knows exactly who he is: a legacy act. He came loaded with original hits, timeless mashups, and crowd-favorite remixes. The elder raver in me just wanted an hour to live in 2014— and jump around singing like nothing else mattered.
Final Thoughts
Ten years after its inaugural outing, FVDED has solidified itself as a tentpole event within the BC scene. Mainstream while remaining diverse. Accessible while encouraging discovery. Nostalgic while still pushing underground genres.
For music fans, these events matter. They connect us. A spiritual refresh button that somehow drains your body but fills your soul. As a millennial attendee who’s been there since the beginning, each year gets harder—but, somehow, that makes each iteration more meaningful.
FVDED forever.
