Whoever heard of an EDM duo with only two songs playing Ultra Music Festival? Well, when the act’s two members are world-renowned DJ/producers Boys Noize and Skrillex, even an electronic dance music institution like UMF will make a special exception. Dog Blood, a crazy collab project from the German electro…
Everyone in the 305 is preparing himself emotionally, physically, and financially for the insane uhntz-uhntz parade (AKA Ultra Music Festival) that’s about to come crashing down. But that doesn’t mean the shriek of electric guitar and finger-freaked bass are gonna be totally drowned out in the March EDM melee. Au…
With the kickoff of Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week just a little over seven days away, our anxiety has reached an all-time high. Only Election Day voting lines throughout South Florida, it seems, are longer than our WMC Party Guides, and that’s becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Still,…
Little Havana rises with the cock. Sunlight gleams off her concrete hips. She revels in her hot and sticky wetness. As fresh, juicy papaya scents float on palm tree breezes, she burns a sacred herb and swallows a cafecito with a piece of buttered toast. Today is her birthday, and…
Among the legion of global superstars alighting in Miami for Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week 2013, one name carries some pretty serious weight at the moment: Maceo Plex. DJ/producer and Ellum label boss Eric Estornel’s rise to international stardom over the last couple of years has been nothing…
Birds of a feather rock together. And that was certainly true for this past weekend’s pre-WMC/MMW Dirtybird mini-showcase at Story Nightclub. It was headmaster Claude VonStroke, leading lady J. Phlip and Tallahassee’s fresh-out-the-egg new guy Mark Starr bringing the serious jams. To be honest, it was probably one of the…
Who down with O.P.P.? Everybody. For over 20 years now, Naughty By Nature has been touring the world off the strength of that crossover hit on its first album. Now fully independent, with new album Anthem Inc in stores, and an upcoming show at LIV, we here at Crossfade caught…
Nine Mile Music Festival 2013 With Stephen, Damian, and Julian Marley, 2 Chainz, Future, Mavado, Capleton, and many others Virginia Key Beach Park Saturday, March 2, 2013 Better Than: Freezing your butt off at a non-reggae outdoor festival. There is no doubt that 50-degree weather in Jamaica does not exist…
It isn’t easy straddling commercial success and underground credibility in the world of electronic dance music. But Swedish superstar DJ-producer Eric Prydz makes it seem effortless. Whether he’s topping the charts with feel-good dance pop under his own name or challenging even the most seasoned prog house and techno heads…
Leave it to local punk and metal promotions powerhouse Speedfreek to convince Valencia, California’s Infest to fly cross-country to Miami for the band’s first show outside of its home state. Ever. Infest’s discography is meager, and the band never left California. But somehow the group has still reached every punk-rock…
Winter Music Conference is a rich tradition that, despite the ignorance of some younger rave fans, has been going strong for 28 years. Over the decades, it’s evolved quite a lot, and now the party has eclipsed the “conference” atmosphere of old. Robbie Rivera remembers how it used to be,…
Thirtysomething goth rockers are an underexploited demographic.Let’s get real: the Jersey Guido bubble has already burst and Rednecks are the wasted-on-television teenage simulacrums du jour. And how long can that last? Pseudo-reality television producers need to wake up and smell the blogging (which, in case you were wondering, smells like…
What does it take to throw the perfect party? Ask Gary Richards, aka Destructo, AKA the man behind the curtain of all Hard events. He’s been in the music business since the ’90s, working with record labels, promoters, DJs, and everyone you could imagine. By now, he’s learned more than…
Everybody loves trap music. It’s been around for decades on the Southern hip-hop scene, but 2012 saw the trap house get raided by electro and house producers. And despite the fact that the EDM trap phenomenon is barely a year old, Ultra Music Festival has already granted the genre its…
These days, Dirtybird Records is almost as famous for its grilled meats as its ass-clapping beats. Blame a successful ten-year run of the San Francisco crew’s infamous renegade Golden Gate BBQ parties, not to mention last year’s inaugural WMC installment which broke the party concept to Dirtybird’s legions of international…
Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week are swiftly approaching, and we are really starting to “Feel the Love.” We’re not sure if it’s the anticipation of a million mollies waiting to get popped, or the recent announcement of a warm-up show by UK sensation Rudimentary, but either way, we’re…
EDM is a new music genre. And Skrillex invented bass music. Yeah, maybe if you’re a clueless American Gen Z glowstick raver. Because in the U.K., everyone and his grandmother knows electronic dance music has been going strong for more than three decades. Music historians even have a name for…
“There is a reason I have a stage name,” Alejandro Rose-Garcia (AKA Shakey Graves) admits. “There is something to be said about performing outside of yourself. I feel that when a lot of people get onstage, they become a bigger version of themselves. It’s the classic becoming the band.” But…
Smoking ganja isn’t just a recreational activity. It’s a righteously stoned ritual. “The more you accept herb is the more you accept Rastafari,” the patron saint of tokers, Bob Marley, explained in a TV interview a few years before his death from cancer in Miami at the tragically young age…
Better than: 90 percent of your other options on a Tuesday night.”We do what we do for this, right here” decreed Every Time I Die lead singer, Keith Buckley, as he stood tall at the edge of Grand Central’s stage, extolling the sanctity of sweaty club dates. Buckley’s declaration was…
Hold on. Has it really been 23 years since Wilson Phillips knocked Madonna’s “Vogue” off the top of the charts? Yeah. And it’s even been more than two decades since Carnie Wilson, her sister Wendy, and their friend Chynna Phillips called it quits just a couple of years after becoming…
“Before Adam and Eve, God created disco and cats — God was Spanish, of course,” say the Young Hearts. Sounds like the kind of God who could have created Miami — America’s tropical, hedonistic disco Garden of Eden.Disco cats are the concept behind Gato y Disco, Young Hearts’ exclusive WMC…
