As the founder of nightlyfe and the Publisher of what many have come to know as the “Unofficial & Uncensored Guide to Winter Music Conference“, I wanted to take this time to thank those who helped make this possible, share with you our plans for Winter Music Conference 2011 and get your feedback.

First and foremast, a massive thank you goes to our dedicated editors & contributors who spent countless hours lending their talents and knowledge to produce great content. A special thank you goes to a few key supporters which include KarmaloopTV, LiveStream, Gina Turner and Ultra Music Festival.

I would also like to thank you, the 78,000+ people who trusted us as resource to plan their trip.

Our team has already begun putting plans in motion for WMC 2011. While a lot of what we are doing will be top secret until this December, you can expect major improvements to our website, live coverage and iPhone app. We will also be offering additional services based on the feedback you provide us.

If you attended WMC 2010, please share your feedback and suggestions on how we can improve your experience next year by leaving a comment below.

I can not wait to be partying with you under the hot Miami sun during Winter Music Conference 2011. Until then, love and respect.

Om records brought the heat this year to their annual Winter Music Conference event, bringing together talent from their label and beyond, from their home in the bay and all over the world.  Klutch was a great venue to host this years event, as the club had it’s two rooms and full outdoor stage packed all night long.

This was the year that indie dance/nu disco finally came front stage at conference, and the OM event was its coming out party.  They brought in young talent like The Rapture, Aeroplane, Crazy P, and Classixx who all threw down the breezy, balaeric disco sounds.  Om did a great job of bringing it lots of variety to the event- I heard funk and soul from Rich Medina and J. Boogie, broken beat from Jazzanova, and even some late night ambient dubstep as I was stumbling out at 5am.  Still,  my favorite part of the night was hearing sets from Fred Everything and Mark Farina, who have been developing and holding down the San Francisco OM house sound for years.  Look for yourself in their facebook photo gallery here, and for a recap of the night, Fred Everything has posted his set to his soundcloud page- stream it below.

<object height=”225″ width=”100%”> <param name=”movie” value=”http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffredeverything”></param> <param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param> <embed allowscriptaccess=”always” height=”225″ src=”http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffredeverything” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”100%”></embed> </object>  <span><a href=”http://soundcloud.com/fredeverything”>Latest tracks by fredeverything</a></span>

This is not your typical review. I’m not going to go in to technical detail about the music; this is my personal experience with Sunday School and why my friends and I keep coming back each year. With exception of the first Sunday School, I’ve attended all of them and 2010 was one of my favorites.

I arrived to SSFD just in time to see the Adam Beyer and Ida Engberg tag team set. I was craving some DJ tag team action all during Winter Music Conference week, and Sunday School was the only place I really got it. After seeing Ida’s performance last year, what I found most interesting was seeing the dynamics between her and Beyer.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHEtoa4m5ak&feature=related

Another musical highlight for me was seeing Funktion live – in fact he was the highlight of my week. He wasn’t for the faint of heart, as his set was a strong hard performance. The techno purist in him definitely, was out in full force. It was the first time catching him play live, and he left me speechless.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tjWq5_p13w

Seth Troxler, Pawel, DOP Live, Paco, along with Danny Howells and Lee Buridge all delivered good sets.  I especially liked Danny & Lee’s tag team set, it was a stand out moment when they played Birds and Souls’ debut single “Birds and Souls” . It’s been a track that has definitely been on my playlist since it came out.

At first I questioned some of the artist on the lineup, mainly Victor Calderone, Sebastian Leger and Tom Middleton. Compared to previous years these additions seemed a bit out of place. But have no fear – in Made we trust. And as expected this year the music was great all around. I can see why Made would want to add artists like Calderon and Leger. They attract a wider audience, which is not necessarily a bad thing; especially if this audience comes to see those artist and they get a taste of a sound. If they like it, then effectively they’ve been converted to “The Darkside of the Underground”. I guess you could say they’ve been schooled! I didn’t make it in time to see Calderone, but I did catch Sebastian Leger, and he surprised me. He played strictly techno and did a good job closing out the party.

There are a number of other reasons beside the music that Sunday School is a must for me. Feeling like a kid again when I wait in line for some ice cream, secretly hoping it would rain to watch people hide under a school bus, and the cast of characters that attend. This year included a Wonder Woman and Jesus.

But most importantly, I know SSFD is the one place year after year I know I will see all of my friends. It’s our final chance to all  hang out and enjoy the music before going back to “reality”. So even though I was walking around like a zombie, I knew I had to make it there because making it there is a tradition we all share.

Sirius XM’s Miami Kick off party of Winter Music Conference 2010, was one of the hottest and most anticipated day events of the conference.  With it being advertised as free for the first 300 rsvp’s, this event definitely had an enormous turn out.

DJ Chuckie opened up the event with his really funky house sound that had the beach pumping fist as the crowd filtered onto the grounds.  He was immediately followed up by Markus Schulz who took us all the tranceland with his finely tuned productions.

In the crowd, one could spot the DJ’s mingling and being interviewed by various camera crews.  Also in attendance was Louie Devito wearing large blue lenses sunglasses and a shirt to match.

As the day progressed, we were treated with a timely performance from Kaskade, and a surprise trance performance from Above & Beyond.

Overall this event was very well run, and with a large main-stage that amply distributed the sound throughout the outdoor venue, as well as to the folks on the beach not in attendance.

The line-up had some of the most hard thumping DJs in club land under one roof.  My favorite surprises of the night were Afrojack with his body rocking funky sound, and Dada Life who really kept the crowd going.

Of course the headlines Laidback Luke and Calvin Harris never ceased to amaze while dropping some of the hottest sets laced with remixes and bombs.  There was never a dull moment while in attendance.

Sunday School for Degenerates has been arguably the best show I’ve been to for each of the last two years during Winter Music Conference. The first year I went, I was treated to sets from Sebo K and Guy Gerber out in the blasting sun at the Pawn Shop. Then last year the hyper-weird set from Steve Bug, the genuinely intriguing set from Seth Troxler, the stand-out performance by the idyllic and punishing Ida Engberg, and total dance destruction from Jooris Voorn just when you thought you couldn’t take any more.

There are places to lie down and sleep, couches to relax on, school buses to stare ironically at, strange if tasty food cooked to order (kind of), and a convenient convenience store a short walk away, with magically rising prices as the days goes on. There is an ice cream truck, the potential for torrential rain that leaves you with the inevitability of doing the squish stomp on the lawn.

Now what can I say about Ida? She’s my tiny Swedish hero. I’m a sucker for irony, contrast, and fact flying in the face of fiction. So imagine my surprise last year when my good friend comes running to get and and says “dude, you gotta check this out! no really, get, the fuck, up”. So I grumble and get to my feet and slide forward to the front of the inside stage, and there she is, with this little grin on her face, plowing through these huge builds into pounding drops. Never too much energy, just a curious glow and a sweet smile, no jarring movements, just her little dance with her hands before the bass would kick. The thousand or so people who were there last year to see Ida surprise us all will never forget it – the best set of WMC 2009 for many of us. And she was coming back again this year, playing at 9:30 in the morning.

You best bet I would be there.

Now, a funny little story: this year she was playing with Adam Beyer, her label boss. And I gotta say, I truly missed just being able to see her alone and in control. He was constantly adjust her settings, shifting her movements, and playing with effects; there was very obvious tension behind the decks, with her occasionally looking to him for approval rather than just playing for the audience like how she did last year. I certainly wasn’t disappointed in their whole set, it was great. But Adam Beyer and his 8 ft. tall form look as though they should be behind a hard techno set. He dwarfed Ida and made my irony and contrast fundamentals disappear.

And everybody knows, even if the purists fight against it, that no show is just about the music. It’s about presentation, about environment, about vibe, and a million other things. Last year was perfect in all regard to Ida’s set. This year was perfect in everything except that fact that she was sharing the stage. I’m sure he’s technically a better DJ, with tons more experience and technical ability, but he should have taken the moment to step back and let her ride the music. When everything is right, a show can be magical. The interactions between the two of them while they were playing took away some of that.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh66Yhepm3g

Paco’s set was the surprise event of WMC 2010 for me. I’ve seen him a few times before, I’ve listened to his productions and mixes, and never been totally blown away. But this time, it was mind-bending. It may have helped that the speakers were the loudest, the lights were the brightest, and that I was completely at the end of my energy limits. But there he was, with his super-serious face on, smoking his cigarettes and crushing the last few hours of my Miami experience away.

I was front row and center, with a bunch of the people I’d come to the show with, letting out the last bits of energy that I had left. By the time Paco started, I had already been at Sunday School for Degenerates for 10.5 hours. I’d heard wonderful music from Ida, from Seth Troxler, from Tom Middleton (barring that strange excursion into trance for a few records?), from Pawel, from Mathias K, from Funktion, with his super simple computer and MIDI controller set up that he punished us with, and from Steve Bug.

I was totally spent, drained, wrung out.

And yet here was one last final hurrah in catastrophically pounding fashion. I was curious, looking at the lineup earlier, why they would put Steve Bug before Paco. Now I understood why. Paco brought his arsenal with him; 50 cal. beats. This wasn’t about sharpshooting. It was about laying waste to anyone who was left alive on the battle field. And then you were resurrected. And gunned down again. Double shot to the head, execution style.

It was the last set I heard during WMC 2010.

I said bring it.

He brought it.

Even with the beautiful, bumping, bass-heavy tunes, bright sunshine and Betty’s and Bob’s at the Desolat vs. Cadenza show, we couldn’t stay forever. Lots of stuff to check out while it was still daytime.

So we headed to the Gansevoort hotel to check out the Get Physical Pacha show. The door guy looked extremely confused and told us that there were no shows in the hotel, but if we wanted to go up to the rooftop, to just tell the elevator guy. We went up to the roof (where we saw Deadmau5 and Tommy Lee a few years ago) and indeed, nothing was going on. After talking to one of the waitstaff, we figured out that the show was on the beach directly behind the hotel, and that the door guy had just confused us further. We ordered some awesome food (turkey club and steak strips) and wandered back out to where the stage was set up.

The beach area behind the Gansevoort hotel is gorgeous. And the sand felt great on my feet, even through my shoes. And the sun, too, through my hat and hoodie.

The stage back there was a little intimidating, compared to the size of the dancefloor in front of it. The beach was wide instead of deep, and people were just gearing up when we got there. There were a few beach balls bouncing around, with most people in chillout mode. There were all sort of VIP type areas set up under tents and with seating, set and ready for when later revelers would be hitting. The speakers were just a touch overdriven if you were too close up front.

The  Italoboyz were already playing weird and grimy when we got there, the way they’re known to do, and I’m not positive everyone was quite ready to get down that funky with the sun still straight overhead.

We heard whispers around the campfire that Damian Lazarus wasn’t going to be playing, because of some issue with his flight.

We relaxed on the beach a little ways away from the speakers and chilled out for a minute to enjoy the moment. Excellent booking, and we heard that later on the party was jumping there.

If an event could be judged by the venue alone, One Night Only would have been my favorite. With a room to please every side of my personality, Karu & Y truly blew me away. Add in the quality of performers, and One Night Only seemed like a certain home run. I started my night with Mightyfools, who quickly became one of my favorite discoveries of Winter Music Conference 2010. AC Slater and Star Eyes blew me away as well, but something was missing. What was it?

The party needed volume. Great performances by Josh Gabriel and Wolfgang Gartner were enough to make me stick around, but being the WMC equivalent of blue balls, I left this event needing more. So that is exactly what happened. I left this event early and went somewhere else. Somewhere louder. – Whitney Lawson

Bring on the Beats at the South Seas Hotel was the perfect way to begin my Winter Music Conference experience. It may have taken a few hours of sun and cocktails to get everyone warmed up, but the event turned out to be one of my favorites. I?ve been to too many pool parties where everyone is scared of the water, but there was no shortage of beautiful girls willing to throw off their heels and get their hair wet. The crowd was still pale at this point, but that didn?t stop anyone from showing some skin and shaking their ass to the likes of Icey, Deekline, and the party?s very social host, Brazen. Bring on the Beats was the perfect reminder of everything there is to love about Miami, and I promise you?ll find me there next year. – Whitney Lawson

Late Wednesday night I went to the Ovum showcase to see Josh Wink & Steve Bug. Totally rad. I don’t think I have ever seen Steve Bug happier. It was loud, hot, dark, and dank. Muggy and sweat-flavored. A raver’s paradise, if you could get past the fact that Bug + Wink does not equal unicorns and rainbows, and in fact more equals hallucinated mimes with small powertools, running amuck searching for where to plug the respective cords into.

I love the Bug. And I love Josh Wink. Their musicality and their performances are inspirational and genuine – dark, dirty, acidy, progressing through huge buildups just to end up approximately where the music was before. It’s a tease, and I know it. Their music makes me think of weirdness imploding into itself and then giggling, saying “Ha! Fooled you!” There isn’t necessarily always a lot going on musically. Bug and Wink aren’t known for being complicated; in fact they are usually very very careful, letting their listeners take emotional baby steps into the darker corners of the psyche, all the while maintaining that sometimes a banana is just a banana.

And Shine, as a venue? Yikes. It is certainly one of the caviest of the techno caves I have ever been to. Stairs that head downward into a pit in front of the DJ booth. Crazy lighting systems and sets of flown speakers hanging all over. If there was any place to see a Josh Wink vs. Steve Bug set, it was there.

It was a little hard to get a read on the crowd; it was too dark to see anything, and the masses of people wandering back and forth were just sort of like blurry chunks of temporary light.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPYcGMy4mVI

Yes. This, this right here is the techno womb, and we, we are the techno babies … Always fun to be reborn. :)

It was really crowded the whole time I was there, so I kept mostly to the outside fringes of the room. I did manage to station myself next to a low-lying couch/footrest thing of furniture, and in the blackness of the cave I saw quite a few people try to shortcut their way through the crowd and end up catching a quick full-frontal belly flop right near my shoes.

And then, in their dark sunglasses, they would look around and make sure nobody just saw them do a face plant into an invisible stretch ottoman. And they would note, that no one saw, except the dude in the red hat.

The floors was sticky and I got saddled with an overly large backpack for a while, so not too much dancing for me, just heady appreciation of two of my favorites working back and forth with each other on a stage built for their specialty, and a captive audience of voluntary suckers.

It was a long walk back to where I was staying, with a quick detour to head a little way down Collins, and a stop over to get a slice of Pizza Rustica. And then sleep, at least for a few hours.

“C’mon. Let’s go. Everybody says it awesome … !” How many times have you heard that? Well, every once in a while you have to believe everybody …

Nocturnal was definitely the clubbiest club I’ve been to yet it Miami, just in terms of size and scope. The way the dancefloor, DJ booth, and speakers were laid out. The difference between the ground floor and the terrace. The decorations, the lights. I heard that it’s occasionally kind of grimy in there, but I would have had to stop being mild overwhelmed for a while to start looking for dust bunnies. So many people, such great music (Camea was playing on the ground floor, not sure who up in the terrace). It was also the only place I went all Conference where a decent percentage of people were actually dancing. Not bobbing, wiggling, fist-pumping, or waving stuff in the air – but actually dancing. Maybe it was because there was actually room to move in places where the sound was still good, maybe it was just a certain type of event, maybe it was a certain type of music, maybe it was the fact that a certain type of hardcore people were still up and functioning at 4 in the morning.

Regardless, this was definitely a place where you could lose yourself and your sense of time. The massive space, the massive roof, the massive speakers, the massive sound, the massive crowd. You get the idea. Add to that the line-up featured a ton of my favorites as well, often tagging back and forth against each other. If Shine was the techno cave, this was the techno courtyard.

And the one humor-laced counterpoint of my time there – some dude rolled up to me, randomly, and said “Yo, I got so freaked out when I saw all the cops outside that I threw out my cigarette pack with all my drugs in it.  I hope somebody enjoys my six pills and $50 of coke.” And on that note, he smiled and went back to dancing.

My intention this year for Winter Music Conference was to be a big, fat sponge. I wanted to watch and listen to everything in Miami until I exploded, and then hopefully some kind soul would find my scattered pieces and glue or staple them back together.

The WMC puzzle is one of excesses – how much living can you smash into a single week; how much music can your brain hold, how many people can you meet, how many places can you go? To get to that end, I didn’t eat much, didn’t drink much, didn’t sleep much, and didn’t spend more money than I had. So in the end, my musical, philosophical, and budgetary prep work for this year allowed me to have the best time at Conference that I’ve had yet.

All the shows I went to were at least pretty good, and some were excellent, but the best show by far was Sunday School for Degenerates, same as for the last two years. I think one of the reasons that SS is always such fun for me is that there is no room for casual people in the crowd. It’s a 24-hour party on the last day of WMC. You have to be dedicated, hard core, or very patient to be able to make it there at all, and to stay for any length of time, you truly have to love the music and the culture.

As far as organization went, I was absolutely amazed by Ultra Music Festival this year. The sound was tighter and cleaner, the lighting systems were insane, there were several more stages than last year, and the music seemed to be better organized for public consumption, with genres and types of performances a little more balanced than in the past.

During the week, I was a little surprised at the types of music that I heard overall. There was a lot more house and techno than I remember from before, and a lot less electro-ish, minimal bleepy, or trance sounds. It felt a little as though the DJ’s and artists were getting back to basics – good, solid, well produced electronic music with punchy drums, solid basslines, and well-structured peaks and valleys. I didn’t hear a lot of epic breakdowns, screechy vocals, overdriven sawtooth synths, or dated let’s-all-sway-back-and-forth whooshy noises.

I just heard a lot of good, solid music through good solid sound systems, with good, solid intelligent lighting (except maybe for the pitch black room with a single lightbulb on).

I think the only thing I plan on doing differently next year is I’d really like to only go to one event per day, to really dig in and enjoy it, without feeling like a zombie because there’s only enough time for a two-hour disco nap between shows. I’d burned out by my third day of trying to make it to everything I’d scheduled, so I even ended up sleeping in the car for a few hours waiting to go from one place to another. There’s so much going on that it’s hard to pick what to do, but I think it would be better to choose carefully rather than being grumpy when I did get to places.

Stay tuned to this blog for more in-depth reviews of events, and I’ll be posting more videos and pics as I get them processed.

Cheers!

rx

Miami! Miami! Miami! I just spent a wild week at Winter Music Conference 2010, quite possibly the world’s largest gathering ever of electronic music fans, freaks and friends in the flashy city of blingy blue ocean waves, lazy palm trees, slick star-scrapers and an energy level almost as high as the dance floor.

A week-long cavalcade of party after party after rave after boat after beach after pool after rooftop, WMC is most definitely a one-of-a-kind experience that every electronic music lover should experience at least once before you go to meet the great beatmaker in the sky.

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