Paul van Dyk Brings New ‘Essence of Acid’ Live Show to Dreamstate SoCal
The trance icon will premiere a live hardware show built on 303s, 808s and 909s at Dreamstate SoCal, November 20-21 at Long Beach's Queen Mary Waterfront.
Paul van Dyk is doing something he’s never done before, and he picked the perfect room for it. The trance icon will debut The Essence of Acid, an all-new live hardware performance, at Dreamstate SoCal — November 20-21, 2026 at the Queen Mary Waterfront in Long Beach, California — with his premiere set going down on the Saturday night.
So what actually is it? According to the announcement, The Essence of Acid is built around a live electronic setup rather than a standard DJ rig — PvD will be driving Roland Boutique Series hardware, the modern recreations of the TB-303, TR-808 and TR-909 that basically invented acid and techno as we know them. The show promises unreleased material, acid-leaning new compositions and live reworks of his catalog, all manipulated in real time. Even the production design leans into the concept: think circuitry, oscilloscopes and waveform visuals, with the lights and lasers synced directly to what’s happening on the hardware.
A 303 in the hands of the guy who made “For An Angel”? Sign us up.
There’s a nice full-circle element here too. Van Dyk was one of the artists who helped Insomniac launch the Dreamstate brand back in 2015 — he even toured the U.S. under the Dreamstate banner in its early years — so debuting his most experimental show yet at the franchise’s flagship event just feels right. A decade on, Dreamstate is still the biggest home trance has in North America.
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He’s in good company, too. This year’s edition packs 80-plus artists across the trance spectrum, with Above & Beyond and Infected Mushroom among the heavy hitters on the bill. If you’re planning your fall festival runs, we’ve got everything mapped out in our 2026-2027 festival calendar.
Tickets for Dreamstate SoCal are on sale now through the festival’s Front Gate ticketing page, with GA and 21+ VIP options available. If you’ve ever wanted to watch a trance legend wrestle a 303 live instead of just pressing play, November 21 is your night.
