Under the big top

With a record attendance of 225,000 festivalgoers last year and more than 100 bands and 25 DJs this year, maximizing your Lollapalooza time can be tricky. Take a detour from the rock & roll—and the sun—and instead catch our favorite acts holding it down in Perry’s DJ tent.

Friday 7
Call in sick, then head to the DJ tent early to hear Fool’s Gold Records cofounder and prominent Brooklyn party rocker Nick Catchdubs (1pm), who seamlessly mixes hip-hop, house, electro and dubby goodness.

By late afternoon, some of our hometown heroes take to the tent. Trendsetters Mark Gertz, Trancid and Greg Corner of Dark Wave Disco (2:45pm) represent for the black-nail-polish side of the indie-electro scene. But don’t let that typecast this versatile crew: It’s shared the stage with Junior Sanchez and Lady Sovereign. Tattooed MC Hollywood Holt’s (3:45pm) hilarious braggadocio can overshadow his output at times, but his performances are never dull.

The weekend’s most heavily stacked day continues with sets from DMC champ, superb selector and DJ to Kanye West, A-Trak (5:45pm), who precedes techno sensation Simian Mobile Disco (7pm). With an artistic integrity that surpasses dance-music fads, SMD could easily be the night’s highlight. That said, Kid Cudi’s (9:25pm) no phony, either; with “Day ’n’ Night,” he’s sure to send the crowd into a frenzy.

Saturday 8
Where Friday’s lineup caters heavily to the hipster masses, Saturday’s schedule—admittedly, the weekend’s weak link—has a more specialized feel. Psychedelic folk-rockers Animal Collective (2:30pm) offer a day-trippin’ romp through their left-field aesthetic in a set that’ll probably be just slightly less heady than their ornate live shows.

Before heading off to see Santigold, catch a bit of Hercules and Love Affair (5pm), one of the biggest acts on DFA. Their vintage disco-meets-’90s-house sound is the only one of its kind all weekend.

While the madly decent Diplo (7pm) makes it to Chicago about three times a year, his tropically flavored sets are always on point, traveling from Brazilian baile funk to Angolan kuduru, all with an underpinning of forward-thinking hip-hop.

Another lone representation of an emerging dance style, dubstep, gets its due from San Fran’s headlining Bassnectar (8:30pm). Though his sound transcends any one descriptor—glitch, dub and hip-hop run through a white-boy hippie filter—his sub-bass, half-time, reggae-sampling freak-outs are undeniably of the dubstep mold.

Sunday 9
A bit like Chitown’s own version of Thunderheist, He Say She Say (2:30pm), Million $ Mano’s dance project with vocalist Drea, bounces, shakes and pops. In large part hip-hop and electro with bits of pop and indie rock thrown in, He Say She Say goes well beyond your average DJ set.

If you’re not a Gang Gang Dance fan, stick around for Hood Internet (3:30pm). Two of the more clever mash-up artists around, STV SLV and ABX masterfully combine the most unlikely bands, creating cheeky pop masterpieces out of beats and pieces from the likes of Genesis, Souls of Mischief, Twista, Roxy Music and anything else they can pull out of their bag—i.e.,computer—of tricks.

Come evening, German tech-houser Boys Noize (5:30pm) sets the pace for a dance-heavy grand finale. Counting celebrity DJs such as A-Trak among his biggest fans, Boys Noize’s remixes for artists such as Feist and Bloc Party lifted him out of the underground. His melodic techno and big-room electro are a perfect lead-in for MSTRKRFT (7pm). Loud, distorted and full-on electro, the vowel-less team of two will have the place going properly ape-shit until the colorfully masked and equally high-energy Deadmau5 (8:30pm) closes out the night.

Lollapalooza goes down in Grant Park Friday 7–Sunday 9.

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