By Kevin Bracken

If you have ever been to Cherry Beach on a Sunday, you are no doubt familiar with the chill beats and mellow atmosphere of a Promise event. This weekend, Promise teams up with alienInFlux for their annual Harvest Festival. The festival, which begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday near Huntsville, ON, is billed as an “Autumn equinox arts and music Celebration.” It is perhaps more accurately described as a bookend to a summer of Toronto-area dance music, signaling a bountiful end, for the most part, to our outdoor partying before another long winter.
With names like Noah Pred and Lee Osborne for techno, Rollin’ Cash and the Primal Drum Collective for world beats, and FM Radio Gods for psychedelic trance, the musical talent alone should make this a memorable year.
This year, the festival moves to a brand new location, Midlothian Ridge. The most intriguing thing about this space, certainly, is the many massive, eerie concrete sculptures that have been painstakingly created by the property owner for the last two decades. The event features three artist-designed stages, a delicious organic kitchen, fireworks, circus performers from Lunacy Cabaret, Harvest’s iconic giant bonfire, and dozens of DJ’s and musicians from Toronto and beyond.
Photos from the Harvest Festival website.