Flying to Colorado to see Madeon
Editor's note: this post was written in Oct 2025.
SO yes I did fly from Oakland to Denver to see Madeon and yes this is during the school year and I skipped 2 days worth of lectures and I spent a lot of money on this trip overall. But YES THIS WAS SO WORTH IT. I'm in the hotel right now as I have a flight in like 7 hours at 7:50 AM on Sunday and there's just too much to talk about, like I'll try to do my best here in this post.
Background
So to contextualize my love for Madeon, I first discovered him in 7th grade thru "Shelter" and I remember like one of my friends covering it on Saxophone during band class. I basically discovered him with Porter together and I quickly got hooked onto some tracks from his debut album "Adventure" that is like iconic and critically acclaimed and like just reslistening it today like its just so nostalgic. It's crazy nostalgic and just the way he integrates the vocals and how direct the production and mixing is just rly takes me back to that time of EDM
And then when he released Good Faith in 2019, instantly just to the next level. I didn't fully start listening to this album in detail until like 2022-ish, but this is one of 4 10/10 albums that I've ever listened to (Simulation Virtual Riot, Nurture Porter Robinson, Good Faith Madeon, Love & Ponystep Vylet Pony). And these 4 albums are just so integral to my music listening it almost feels like my music taste revolves around these 4 albums it's such a transcendental feeling honestly. Good Faith has these gospel elements and the synths are so deep and the vocals are so crisp and satisfying and it's so cohesive and also these melodies are just so versatile. Man I'm not gonna trap myself by talking more about it because I could talk about Good Faith and write about it for hours.
So when my friend hit me up talking about how he was going to the show and he's also a die-hard Madeon fan, I'm basically like yea im pulling up this sounds hella fun. And also I just finished a long internship where I worked very hard and made a lotta money and I'm just like yeah theres no way I don't deserve this. So yeah, during the school year we flew out to Colorado, here's how it went:
Day 1 (Thursday, arrival)
- Flight at like 7 PM, kept getting delayed we ended up boarding at like 9 PM or something and we flew southwest and it was honeslty kinda chopped like the plane didnt takeoff until like 30 minutes on the plane or something it felt like idk why it took so long to takeoff too but anyway thats the price of cheap flights and if it works in the end ig its whatever
- Uber to hotel and sleep
Day 2 (Friday, show day)
- Woke up at like 12 PM
- Walked to and ate lunch at this chicken sandwich place and it was pretty good i ordered this nashville hot sandwich and it was honestly pretty spicy like i did feel it
- Then we walked to the state capitol park neraby and it was rly hot and sunny and the park was honestly kinda underwhelming ig my standards are too high from the sacramento one but this one had a nice like cathedrawl looking building thing but other than that its just grass and streets and nothing popping out like no effort bro no uniqueness. Its just very large and open and its not even that aesthetic overall. Neraby was this art museum and we went in and there was AC and it was a mid museum honestly kinda a waste of time but its whatever i did learn some stuff ig bro museums are honestly kinda overrated but bro im going off a tangent anyway
- And then after that i think we just uber'd back to the hotel and rested for like 30 min and then uber'd to Morrison which is this small city right next to the Red Rocks stadium
- Show
- Dinner grilled cheese tomato bacon thing
Day 3 (Saturday, exploring Denver)
- Woke up at 11 AM
- walked to brunch place, ordered biscuit maple syrup honey chicken sandwich thing
- walked to botanical gardens
- uber'd to washington park
- uber'd to hotel chilld for like 10 min
- walked to the music center thing
- walked along 16th street, started heading towards rino
- stopped at denver market place thing, ate acai bowl
- walked to rino park, got a bit dark
- uber'd to meow wolf, meow wolf until like 10:30 PM
- uber'd to area near hotel, ate this marios speakeasy pizza that was rly good
- walked to hotel, slept
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Okay I wrote all of that text above in like October 2025 and never finished up the post LOL. Now it's may 31st 2026 and I'm rushing to get a post out for this month because I have this streak going on where I need to post every month. Now this is a good excuse to get this out.
SO you can see I wrote bullet points for what I did every day sicne I was so fried at night to write in full. Now let's summarize how this trip went in total.
So the trip was really fun, just exploring Colorado which I've never been to was really fun. Denver is a really neat city, they had that one big walkable street that almost felt like you were in Europe. Really wholesome vibes and it's a really nice city I really did enjoy it. Would come back here someday if I had an excuse to and maybe rent a car or something and fully explore neighboring sceneries and highways cuz that sounds fun.
The show was insane, like this is all new music being heard for the first time so it felt so special. The visuals were insane, the sound was insane, and before this there was only one single release and it was "Hi!" and I wasn't the biggest fan but this concert sold me because this like dark punk style infusion with these grand EDM synth pad stacks were crazy and yeah you just can't doubt Madeon because this new album will be so fire and his standards are just straight next level. The lights and the music was so insane like there were these synchro nyce synths in the tracks and "the band" concept was sick and I'm a huge fan and man it just made me so happy.
And then the venue was like jaw-dropping thats such a corny word to use but seriously it's in this desolate high-elevation area and youre literlaly overlooking the city and at night the backdrop was litearlly just a city skyline like wtf. You know how ppl drive over to some spots at night to look at the view and city skyline, it's basically just having a concert there and then putting that as the backdrop.
So much more happened like I spotted and recognized DCranks which was so insane and liek what are the odds I found him in line for merch liek this is a YouTuber with 3k subs that I recognized this is way too funny.
And that is my rushed post for May here, I'm literally rushing this so hard so I missed so many detials but I'm happy that I got this post out at least. I have 2025 Q4 EDM literally almost done so you'll see that post very soon!
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