It’s mere days away until Elements Music and Arts Festival gets underway in Long Pong, PA, and a lot has already been said about its star-studded lineup and sustainable environmental initiatives. One aspect needing more attention is the plethora of stage takeovers planned for Elements, such as Chris Lake’s Black Book Records, Seven Lions’ Ophelia Records, and Femme House co-founded by LP Giobbi. Additionally, four more takeovers were added to the festival — Sermon, The Drop BK, Para Presents, and Synchro.
Interestingly, Synchro Events shares quite a few similarities with BangOn!NYC, the independent event organizer responsible for Elements as we know it today. Just 10 years ago, BangOn!NYC threw its first event, a single-day affair on the Brooklyn Waterfront, and now 10 years later, it is setting the stage for another upstart Brooklyn production company to step into the limelight.
Founded in 2020 with a focus to foster a thriving underground music community in New York City, Synchro has grown its loyal fanbase by curating events featuring a healthy mix of established artists and local talent. Moon Lvnding was able to speak with Synchro’s co-founders, Sean McConnachie and Bleda Cilingir, to learn more about the production company and its journey to get to Friday’s Wub Hub stage takeover at Elements.
Synchro started hosting events once pandemic restrictions were lifted in New York City on July 1, 2021, and has aimed to “combine the energy and atmosphere of festivals with club culture in New York City,” McConnachie explained. “We looked for spaces that could provide a multi-stage experience and vowed to organize them with the electronic music community in mind. We hired all of our own bartenders, security, floor managers… Our goal from the beginning was to draw a crowd independently of headlining acts, for Synchro to be a name in its own right, and we were fortunate enough to find that our dedication paid off and led us all the way to Elements.”
But the path to success is not without peril. McConnachie recalled a chance encounter days before Synchro’s first event and the advice he received. “We had maybe 15 sales a few days before [the event] and we had rented an 11,000 square foot warehouse that could hold well over 1,000 people. We thought we’d never throw another event. At the height of the stress, we met a man who also was an organizer… and he said something that stuck with me, ‘All you have to focus on is giving them an experience. If it’s ten people or a hundred, give them something they’ll remember and they’ll stick with you.’”
“The night of the event we sold over 300 tickets and had the most memorable debut we could ask for,” McConnachie reminisced. “He later became the talent buyer for Elements and approached us with the opportunity. They had a lot of interest from major labels but we were hungry to be selected and sent across ideas for what our takeover would look like. We like to think it was a matching of minds.”
Synchro has produced a variety of multi-room events in venues all over New York City, and Elements will be its first opportunity to host a stage takeover. The team at Synchro is thrilled to be on the lineup next to long-time EDM legends like Skrillex and Porter Robinson, who serve as inspirations for its brand.
Cilingir shared that “Skrillex’s label Owsla is our biggest inspiration for how we’ve approached our branding. They were able to combine artist merch with streetwear and an element of luxury in a way no music brand had done before and I’ve been leading Synchro’s clothing line with the same mentality. Porter Robinson is another giant inspiration for why we consider electronic music a serious art form and how we got into this. Seeing Synchro alongside the names that got us here is immensely humbling and we couldn’t thank the team at Elements enough.”
Synchro gets the weekend started by hosting Friday at the Wub Hub and the team delivers with an enticing lineup featuring Trowl, Shotgun Knights, LEUTHERO, Festival Finesser, Masta Plan, Crawdad Sniper, Nikademis, SAVAS, Barnacle Boi, and Skeler. Each of the artists has a bio on the handy Elements mobile app, which is a great tool for learning about new artists, scheduling activities, and mapping the set times.
There’s still time to snag a last-minute ticket to get in on the action at Elements Music & Arts Festival this year. To keep up to date with Synchro Events, check out the social links below.
