Live, in Photos: Life Is Beautiful 2024 with LCD Soundsystem, Justice, Jungle, and More

EventsLive, In Photos

Live, in Photos: Life Is Beautiful 2024 with LCD Soundsystem, Justice, Jungle, and More

James Blake, Peggy Gou, Jamie xx, LP Giobbi, Thundercat, and more from the reconfigured annual fest in Las Vegas.

Photos: Valerie Magan

September 30, 2024

If you’d asked any of Life Is Beautiful’s thousands of loyal attendees earlier this year whether they thought the annual Las Vegas festival was going to take place in 2024, you would’ve been met with some serious doubt. Take the event’s Subreddit, for example: Formerly a faithful forum that sang praises for the beloved festival, it’s since become a hotbed of negativity with their most popular threads swirling with confusion over the state of the festival. So when Life Is Beautiful’s A Big Beautiful Block Party was announced back in July with a completely new format, no one knew what to expect.

But if you took a chance and headed out to the Plaza this weekend, odds are you would’ve been pleasantly surprised. With a bill that featured 14 acts spread out over two days, the annual music and arts festival celebrated its eleventh year with a constellation of music stars and sets that delivered on the promise of bringing the heat, even as the mercury soared past the 100 degree mark.

While the festival has been massively scaled back this year after its sale to Rolling Stone (it traditionally took up the better part of Downtown Las Vegas with sprawling setups of food, art, and vendors), fun was by no means sacrificed for a smaller footprint. The focus this year was almost entirely on the music: even in the sweltering desert heat, the two nights were easy to enjoy as Life Is Beautiful brought in a stacked lineup and a clever side-by-side stage setup that ensured everybody kept dancing nonstop through the night.

Although it may have been tedious ping-ponging from one stage to another, the savvy system got acts going in quick succession. Crews would set up one stage for the next performer as soon as it was vacated by the previous one, getting the stage design ready in time as the following act performed, ensuring no one missed a moment of performances. There was no more Vegas-like way to spend the weekend than in a hotel lot with great tunes, fireworks, and the omnipresent marquees of the Plaza and Golden Nugget hotels—a detail that made it so quintessentially Vegas.

From Thundercat’s mesmerizing, boundary-pushing jazz fusion, to viral sensation Jungle’s funky, carnivalesque beats, to Jamie xx’s masterful mixing, to LCD Soundsystem leading us on a sonic journey through the years, FLOOD photographer Valerie Magan captured some of the best moments from Life Is Beautiful’s A Big Beautiful Block Party over the weekend. Check out her shots below.

DAY ONE