They say a lot of things about Texas: Everything is bigger there, all your exes live there, and you certainly shouldn’t mess with it. But you won’t often hear about its quality weird-rock scene. Nestled in south-central Texas, San Antonio has given the music world luminaries such as punk/Tejano royalty…
Generally speaking, society has defined the way mothers and sons bond. It usually involves shared interest in geeky passions or time at familial gatherings. Heads nodding in sweaty, immense crowds to techno typically doesn’t make the cut. Try telling that to Thomas Marshall, who’s 29 years old, and his mother…
As grownups living out their teenage rock-star dreams, it’s only right that the five guys who make up We the Kings named their band after the Bradenton middle school they attended. “We all went to Martha B. King Middle School,” keyboardist Coley O’Toole confirms. “Travis Clark and Hunter Thomsen started…
Music has always been a way to escape, and dance music embodies this mission more than any other genre. Following the “disco sucks” movement of 1979, marginalized groups — black, Latino, and gay — were once again pushed outside the mainstream. Genres like house and techno were born in the warehouses in which these groups sought refuge.
Currently, 18 of the first 30 songs listed on Billboard’s Hot 100 are electronic, hip-hop, or a style that contains some element of either. This year, the 19th edition of Ultra Music Festival was a reflection of that trend. The main stage, headlined by the biggest names in EDM — DJ Snake, David Guetta, Martin Garrix, Steve Aoki, etc. — drew the largest crowds.
Though Daniel Crespo spent the first years of his life in Chicago, his family’s move to Miami when he was 6 years old was what shaped the performer who became DJ Crespo. “Both Chicago and Miami have a special place in my heart, but Miami has definitely become home,” Crespo…
For many years, being a fan of the English rock band Radiohead meant three little words: “True Love Waits.” That’s the name of the sentimental ballad that long served as the Holy Grail of the band’s unreleased tracks. First heard on 2001’s I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, it was…
Sunday night, Ultra Music Festival let downtown know that its three-day party was over with a fireworks display at the end of DJ Snake’s set on the main stage. Condo dwellers breathed a sigh of relief knowing they would finally be free once again to roam the city.
Though you might want to attend Radiohead at the American Airlines Arena, tickets cost more than your first-born. So we turn our attention to another act. Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave band that has made a career out of covering pop songs set to bossa nova grooves, returns to Miami for the first time in more than ten years.
The last time the French alt-rockers of Phoenix rolled into Miami, they were at the tipping point between indie darlings and household-name status. Their 2009 album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, with hits like “1901” and “Lizstomania,” was getting play everywhere from college radio to Super Bowl ads. No wonder, then, that their 2010 appearance at the Fillmore Miami Beach was packed with fans, from Wavves’ opening set till Phoenix’s final song.
This time of year is supposed to be Miami’s dry season. That definitely wasn’t the case the second day of Ultra Music Festival 2017. Gray clouds hung over Bayfront Park and eventually drenched the festival. However, it wasn’t exactly like last year’s storm. In 2016, several performances were scrapped. This year, the show went on.
Thanks to Ultra Music Festival, the rest of the world gets to thaw out in the Magic City while jerking their bodies to the latest EDM hits. It’s becoming a spring equinox celebration of sorts — just with a lot of more neon and very little clothing. Friday launched the…
Still alive? Still ready to rage? Day One of Ultra Music Festival 2017 is history lying beneath a layer of mud and wood chips on the grounds of Bayfront Park. Oh my, but is there a laundry list of Miami Music Week events within and without on this (hopefully) less…
Martial arts is the sort of hobby world-famous DJs might dabble in because they can. Maybe it’s just a narcissistic exercise in looking cool, tucked in between fist-pumping all-night ragers and early-afternoon orgies spent in Jacuzzis with a gaggle of supermodels. Unless that world-famous DJ is Laidback Luke, who is, long story short, a certified badass.
Today is the day. Ultra 2017 is upon us, and our bodies are ready. One of the luxuries of a metropolis like Miami hosting an internationally revered festival such as Ultra is that the music bleeds into all the city’s nooks and crannies. The have-nots — those without tickets to Ultra — can still be the haves because so many of the headliners throw their own parties.
When Olivier Libaux and Marc Collin formed Nouvelle Vague, they inadvertently created the perfect amalgam of new and old. Though they had both been punk and New Wave aficionados, “in 2003, Marc dreamt one night of a Bossa Nova version of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ sung by a Brazilian…
What’s the difference between the Martinez Brothers and most New Yorkers in Miami? The Martinez Brothers were invited. Ba-da-bum-tss! Indeed, for Steve and his brother Chris, who will close out Miami Music Week at Club Space Sunday, New York is a huge source of inspiration.
Wonder why half-naked people in neon tights are wandering the streets of downtown Miami? Welcome! You are obviously new here. Every March, Ultra Music Festival and its satellite events, both official and unofficial — the whole mess is dubbed Miami Music Week — take over Miami and, to some extent, Miami Beach.
There’s a very simple reason that Miami Music Week is world-renowned: The quality and quantity of parties dotting the city’s landscape are unparalleled. We’re only a day away from the 2017 edition of Ultra Music Festival, but the road to Bayfront Park is littered with side streets leading to sick parties.
Michael Brun was a student at Indiana’s Culver Military Academy in 2010 when Hell-on-Earth struck his native Haiti. The massive earthquake killed more than 220,000, injured more than 300,000 others, and left more than a million people homeless. The island was in shambles; there was no communication in or out…
Ellen Allien talks border walls, women in electronic music, and Miami Music Week.
London-born Jesse Rose, one of the most quietly celebrated house DJs in the world, has never played Ultra. And thanks to his impending retirement, he never will. “There used to be a thing where if you played Ultra, you couldn’t play any other parties,” he recalls. “And for me, you…
