It had been a goal of mine to get Armin to come to Burning Man since there was an OT. Having come up in the trance scene of the late 90's, dancing to early huge Armin tracks like 'Blue Fear' on Jerry Bonham's Spundae releases, it was a tenacious effort of chats over cocktails w Armin and his management whenever they would role through SF. Having won the #1 spot in DJ Mag's worldwide poll, he was well acquainted with their editor at the time, Leslie Wright (who wrote a 6 page feature article about OT for DJ Mag in 2008, read it here: opulenttemple.org/archives/000139.php ) During the London party celebrating his repeat victory again in 2008 later that year, she cornered his agent, spit in her hand, made him do the same, and made him promise he'll route Armin through OT the following year.

And so it was.

Armin Van Buuren and agent David Lewis came out (yes, on their own dime) to play Thursday night 2009, alongside Infected Mushroom. I paid off my diligence by scheduling myself to open and dip back in to a rare progressive set at Burning Man. Everyone 'knows' Burners aren't big on trance, but of course, as predicted, they were there by the thousands to see Armin and I saw my job as not trying to bring the house down with big tracks, but to set him up with a solid steady progressive offering with melody and muscle. This is that set.