Over the last 18 months or so super-sized American dance festival Electric Daisy Carnival has, perhaps unfairly, been shouldered with a ‘bad boy’ label among US festivals. Kinda silly when compared to the debauchery that goes down at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival, actually. But nonetheless after a bunch of drama in 2010 saw the festival shunted from its Los Angeles home, the main EDC event relocated to the Las Vegas motorway for three big days this past weekend.

As it turns out being the edgy festival on the block may’ve indeed been a good thing for the EDC identity as after the dust has now settled on the festival’s 2011 Vegas debut it looks like this has been the biggest year yet for the towering dance brand which felt the foot traffic of an estimated 200,000 ravers by the weekend’s end.

That massive attendance can be attributed in no small part to the booming profile of dance music in the United States right now which has seen big house and electro beats infiltrate the mainstream consciousness. But when it comes down to it, no matter how on-trend EDM may be in America right now, there’s no better reason to trek out into the Nevada desert than to experience Electric Daisy Carnival’s jaw-slackeningly good lineup lead by European DJ stars Tiesto, David Guetta and Swedish House Mafia who headlined Friday, Saturday and Sunday night.

As far as headliners go dance festivals don’t come much bigger than that and all three big ticket acts proved their pulling power with stacked crowds awaiting each set. Being that this is America, and beyond that Vegas, the EDC headline sets were always going to be over-blown affairs with all three headliners bringing out their respective big guns to impress on the night. For Tiesto that included carting out Busta Rhymes for an appearance, while Guetta followed suit with one of his many collaborative foils in Flo Rida. The Swedish House Mafia men didn’t rely on any outside players for their Sunday night set though, which makes sense considering that there’s already three individual superstars on stage together in Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello, but their selling point was a mouthwatering visual display and having one of the most smashed-out tunes of the moment in Save The World to their name.

Engrossing production wasn’t restricted to the headliners, mind you, as everywhere one looked across the blank EDC desert space would be towering staging, fluorescent lights and 10 Chinatowns worth of fireworks shooting into the air whenever there was a drop (ie every three minutes).