One of Goldenvoice’s more unique music festivals is returning to the desert after a hiatus.
Desert Air, a weekend music festival at the Palm Springs Air Museum, is making a comeback. In 2021, the festival put some of the hottest electronic artists at a Coachella Valley landmark, and on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 15 and 16, it’s back with performances by Kaytranada, Jamie XX, ATRIP and others.
This year, Desert Air is also hosting programming at Palm Springs Surf Club, which will serve as the “daytime outpost,” giving attendees more to do in a nonstop weekend.
“For Desert Air, we try to make it a weekend getaway vacation experience for people coming into town, and sort of curate Palm Springs in an interesting way, as much as it is a music festival at a venue,” said Desert Air founder Tyler McLean during a recent Zoom interview. “The Surf Club is just another cool layer to that, in that it allows us a daytime outpost—a place to have some programming, some wellness stuff, some pop-up experiences and just a cool place for people to kind of post up during the day. We’re not really programming it in a major way outside of just working with our partner in Midnight Lovers (an underground dance-event producer) to have some music over there. We’ll do some things like yoga, meditation or wellness, and maybe we’ll have some other kind of pop-up things like a record shop there, but otherwise, it’s just a cool place to hang, and it’s a cool place for people to meet up outside of the actual festival.”
Desert Air is similar to Splash House in terms of bringing festival-level talent to unique desert locations, but McLean said Desert Air caters to different kinds of electronic-music fans.
“It’s an electronic-music and dance-music program, and it’s also at the Air Museum … but the programming itself is definitely pretty different,” McLean said. “Electronic music is such a big umbrella term, but this is definitely your more kind of left-leaning, tastemaker, avant-garde lane of music.”
Talent buyer Becky Rosen-Checa said Desert Air represents the current state of electronic music from an alternative perspective.
“Tyler has worked on Splash House for many years, and we love house music, but we both felt like there was not a boutique festival that has more left-of-center acts that we’re seeing, and I think are really hot right now,” Rosen-Checa said. “Goldenvoice also does Portola, and that had its biggest year this year, and in general, we’re seeing a lot of interest from fans in the more left-of-center electronic stuff. We didn’t think that there was an outlet for that in SoCal … so we thought this was a good opportunity to bring some of that music out to Palm Springs, and also bring some fans out there.
“A lot of the people who are going to come to Desert Air are not necessarily the same exact audience as Splash House. I think (Desert Air) has kind of expanded the reach of the Air Museum in a way, and introduced it to more people, and brought more people out to see all that Palm Springs has to offer. I think the programming fits really well with the architecture and history of Palm Springs.”
McLean explained how Desert Air is working together with other promoters—including Lights Down Low, Midnight Lovers, Por Detroit and Chapter One, hosting a pop-up record shop—to honor underground dance-music culture.
“(Desert Air) is a celebration of Palm Springs as an art and design center and capital, and we’re sort of infusing that into the show.”
Desert Air founder Tyler McLean
“Each (promoter) captures different sort-of facets and audiences and lanes within underground dance music,” he said. “Before producing a major music festival and experience that is showcasing underground dance music, it was important for us to bring in and platform and equal-measure promoters that have been in this space and that have really been equal parts cultivating that kind of music in L.A. Midnight Lovers is basically programming the Surf Club, and will host with us on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
Also new this year is a second stage, the Hangar Stage, inside one of the hangars at the Air Museum.
“I think that stage has a defined personality, and it caters a lot to the LGBT community, which also ties in well with Palm Springs history,” Rosen-Checa said. “There is a lot of overlap between people who like this left-of-center electronic music and also this sort of pop-leaning stuff as well. I think both of the days have defined personalities, and I think the stages within the days also have defined personalities, so hopefully that comes through for everyone. We just wanted to make it a big, fun party with a lot of options.”
The other stage, the Terminal Stage, will further honor Palm Springs through its architectural influence.
“(Desert Air) is a celebration of Palm Springs as an art and design center and capital, and we’re sort of infusing that into the show,” McLean said. “There’s a European architect who we hired to create this bespoke, hand-built environment for our main stage that we’re calling the Terminal, so it’s playing off of both aviation and Palm Springs architecture. We’re trying to build on that hopefully in the future with other larger-scale multimedia art installations.”
Desert Air is going beyond the music and hosting “Layovers”—curated experiences showing the beauty of our desert.
“(We’re) showcasing different local creatives and shops and restaurants and things to do in Palm Springs,” McLean said. “For example, in 2021, we had a partnership with Modernism Week and featured some events like architecture bike tours. We’ll try to partner with some different local restaurants and shops and just some things to do. … Whether it’s nature hikes or architecture or food and beverage experiences, it’ll be things to do in Palm Springs before the show begins Saturday and Sunday.”
McLean, Rosen-Checa and the rest of the team are looking forward to cooler weather—and a really cool weekend of music and culture.
“Obviously there’s so much more going on, both in Palm Springs and in L.A. and So Cal in terms of other events,” McLean said. “We want people to come out and really enjoy Palm Springs and the Air Museum.”
Desert Air takes place Friday and Saturday, Nov. 15 and 16, at the Palm Springs Air Museum, 745 N. Gene Autry Trail, in Palm Springs. Single-day tickets start at $99, and attendees must be 21+. For tickets and more information, visit www.desertairfest.com.
