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.
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.
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…
Damian Lazarus throws the best parties. That isn’t an exaggeration. And as evidenced by his staying power, it’s hardly even an opinion. Now in its 12th year, Get Lost is a 24-hour techno party and the longest-running underground event during Miami Music Week. It will begin at 5 a.m. Saturday, March 25, and wrap up at 5 a.m. the next day.
Shit just got real, people. Your options for ditching work and partying all day have tripled in the span of 24 hours, and New Times is here to help sort it out. Offering everything from big names at giant clubs to up-and-comers at smaller gigs, Miami Music Week is in full swing today.
David Sinopoli is an exciting character. As musical director of the famed bar Bardot, cofounder of the III Points music fest, and one-third of the triad now trying to right the foundering ship Club Space, he knows a thing or two about Miami music. The shows Sinopoli and crew have assembled for Miami Music Week – both at Bardot and Space – prove as much.
Playing Miami in the springtime is nothing new for DJ Laidback Luke. “I’ve been to Winter Music Conference every year since 2001,” he tells New Times. “It helped me as an up-and-comer handing out demos and mixtapes. I remember in 2005, I played a hotel lobby, and only three people…
The best things to do Tuesday during Miami Music Week.
There’s a 2007 episode of the BBC Two program The Culture Show that closes with Underworld performing its seminal 1996 hit, “Born Slippy .NUXX” in an anonymous English field. While his longtime creative partner Rick Smith and Underworld touring member Darren Price fiddle away at the monolithic mixing board in…
