The thing about the third night of a three-night run is that the crowd has sorted itself — the people who came once have gone, and what is left on the field is the group that bought all three. Martin Garrix played Northerly Island on June 25th, 26th and 27th, and by the Saturday the front of the field was people who had been there since Thursday.

He was a teenager with a number one when most of this audience was in primary school. He builds sets like a man assembling furniture — the parts are standard and the joins are where the skill is.

Tickets ran sixty dollars a night. Three nights on a city-owned peninsula is a residency, and nobody called it that, which is the only interesting thing about how it was sold.

The Wall

The production was a multi-level LED structure built around a central cross shape, pulsing blue, and it did most of the communicative work. "Animals" is eleven years old and still the moment the field loses its composure — a track built on one idea executed without embarrassment. "High on Life" carried the middle of the set and is the better record, with a melody that survives being played outdoors next to a lake.

What the lake does to this music is specific: it takes the sub-bass and spreads it, so the kick that would hit you in the chest in a warehouse arrives as pressure rather than impact. Garrix's engineers compensated by pushing the mid-range, which keeps the melody legible and costs the drop its violence. In a shed on open water that is the right compromise, and it is why nobody comes to Northerly Island for techno.

Whose Park It Is

This is Chicago Park District land — the same acreage the city took back from Meigs Field in 2003 and designated as a nature area, with prairie restoration on the southern end and a beach. Three nights of amplified dance music on a bird habitat is a trade the city makes willingly, and makes again for Beyond Wonderland in June and for everything else on that schedule. Nobody in the neighbourhood objects, because the neighbourhood is a planetarium and a museum.

Sixty dollars a night, three nights, and a man who has been headlining since he was seventeen. The field bought all three.

Cover image: Northerly Island / Wikimedia Commons