What happens when you introduce a Cuban basketball star to weed, percussion, and the Marley family?You get Johnny Dread, a rasta music ambassador since 1987 when he started playing drums in the band Copacetic with lead singer Julian Marley. Their album “Ghetto Rock” hit number-seven spot on Billboard’s reggae charts…
Gareth Campesinos isn’t stupid. The 26-year-old frontman of Welsh indie outfit Los Campesinos! realizes that you’re illegally downloading music and there’s not a whole lot he can do about it. However, “there comes a time when people have to accept if they’re going to illegally download music,” Campesinos tells Pitchfork,…
The members of New Orleans sludge metal band Eyehategod don’t worship Satan. They don’t kill virgins, hang them upside down over a tub, and wash themselves in blood. They don’t dance inside circles of fire during full moons at midnight. They don’t castrate babies, put hamsters in blenders, or microwave…
Peanut Butter Wolf at Bardot March 29
Mike Dece’s 1996 Album Release Party at Sweat Records March 30
I Am the Avalanche at Speakeasy Lounge March 31
The Roots at the Adrienne Arsht Center March 31
Astrea Corporation at Dada March 31
The air was thick with love (or at least lust) at Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week’s pool parties. Apparently, scantily-clad people deep into intoxicating substances tend to attract each other like horny human magnets. Nowhere else on Earth is there such a shit-ton of popular music, spectacular pools,…
Confetti, smoke machines, champagne, birthday cakes, an inflatable raft, and crowd surfing. It isn’t surprising to find all this stuff at one of Steve Aoki’s performances. He’s known for hyping the crowd up with his crazy stunts. But Aoki dialed it up to 11 for his set at Ultra Music…
Woah, wait a minute. What happened this weekend? We thought we were in Miami. But as soon as we crossed over Biscayne Boulevard we found ourselves in the middle of EDM insanity. We were surrounded by thousands of colorful, crazy-eyed people-creatures. Some of them had furry ears and tails, some…
There’s house concerts. Then there’s Deadmau5. As one of the closing events to the week-long spectacle known as Winter Music Confererence and Miami Music Week, tickets at the door for Deadmau5’s gig ran $150. But that didn’t stop thousands of house music junkies from packing Amnesia Miami’s dancefloor and VIP…
Check out Crossfade’s 76-photo recap from day one of Swedish House Mafia’s Masquerade Motel Miami 2012. Relocating from last year’s tent on the beach, Swedish House Mafia’s Masquerade Motel enjoyed two very successful nights at Dowtown Miami’s recently completed Grand Central Park. Opening for SHM on both nights were Calvn…
Ultra Music Festival’s MC introduced David Guetta as “the man that means more to electric dance music than anyone in the United States.” Hmm, of all time? Definitely not. At the moment? You could make a strong argument for that. Is he the DJ currently making the most money off…
Magnetic Man is a collabo between three dubstep dudes from the UK — DJs Benga, Skream, and Artwork — who met at a record store in the ’90s and have been raging ever since. They’re all big-name DJs and producers in their own right. As Magnetic Man, though, Benga, Skream,…
Read Crossfade’s recap of M83’s two-song set at Ultra 2012. Ultra Music Festival is over. But we’re still wondering about one thing: Will M83 be returning to Miami to make up for a ridiculously shortened Ultra set marred by technical difficulties? Well, in a contrite statement that we just received…
We missed Afrobeta’s opening-night set at Ultra Music Festival. But the Miami duo also played an action-packed closeout to Ultra on Sunday. And we caught it all on camera. The party animals were out in full force and the band’s Cuci Amador and Tony Smurphio were in strong shape. They…
Bassnectar is the sound of a thousand meteors crashing into Earth. On the last night of the fest, his heavy metal/electronic alchemy destroyed Ultra Music Festival 2012’s Live Stage as 6,500 beat freaks raved, raged, and howled. His hourlong set ripped through more genres, samples, and live effects than a…
The Main Stage lineup on Saturday was impressive with both Fatboy Slim and Justice warming up the crowd for headliner Avicii. But at 11:07 p.m., the Swedish DJ was nowhere to be found. And so the restless crowd started chanting his name, “Avicii! Avicii! Avicii!” Maybe the tactic worked. Because…
Back in the 1990s, Fatboy Slim helped establish the standard for EDM producers breaking through to the mainstream. A decade and half later, DJs and producers are once again showing up on Top 40 and what’s left of MTV. We’re not saying Slim has any sort of axe to grind…
Dude, 2ManyDJs are great for a number of reasons. Firstly, they’ve got a great sense of humor, playfully poking fun at themselves, their friends, and the scene itself. Secondly, they’re the same guys behind Soulwax — not to mention Nite Versions, whose remixes are some of the best tracks to…
We were superconfused during the first part of DJ Shadow’s Ultra Music Festival set last night. Just as we we were turning the corner to the Live Stage, we heard him announcing that it was his first time in Miami. But once we actually got a view of things, all…
