TuneLab
Salvatore Ganacci
Tomorrowland Belgium 2019 - W2
In a landscape of sonic seriousness, Salvatore Ganacci is the glorious, unhinged outlier. His 2019 Tomorrowland set isn't a DJ performance; it's a surrealist theatre piece scored by breakbeat, hardstyle, and the most chaotic big room house imaginable. The vibe is one of beautiful confusion—where else do you get a Cinderella waltz intro followed by a man doing the worm on the decks? Technically, it's a fascinating mess. The BPM average of 138.4 is misleading, as it yo-yos from 128 to 167, covering hardcore, breaks, and electro.
The harmonic throughline is tenuous at best, with 12A appearing often simply because it's the key of countless festival bangers he gleefully mutilates. The energy is all about sudden, jarring contrasts, a calculated assault on expectation. His track choices are performance art. Opening with a Brandon Fiechter classical piece ('Cinderella') is pure genius.
Dropping a frantic bootleg of 'Beggin'' by Ibranovski is peak chaos, and the centerpiece is the monstrous, nearly 7-minute Hardwell mashup juggling DJ Khaled, hardstyle, and 'We Wanna Party.' Even his own closing track, 'Imagine,' feels like a psychedelic, slowed-down comedown from a sugar rush. The journey is uniquely Ganacci: from a classical fairytale opening, ascending into the utterly bonkers peak of the Hardwell mega-mashup, and finally floating back to earth on the trippy, melodic waves of his own 'Imagine.'.