Despite the undisputed fact that women fuel all party scenes, both literally and spiritually, DJ and artist lineups for WMC/M3 remain largely an annual sausage fest. Women are in the minority, but the balance appears to have improved over the years as trends evolved. “It seems the scene, for the…
Admit it. All you wanna do is “party and bullshit,” hip-hop style. Fortunately there will be some peeps in town this week to join you, including DJ JS-1 from the famed Rock Steady Crew, who plans to join a scratch battle tentatively scheduled for the M3 summit. “I don’t usually…
While one hails from Ghent, Belgium, and the other from Glasgow, Scotland, the Glimmers (Mo & Benoelie, formerly the Glimmer Twins) and Optimo (JD Twitch & JG Wilkes, named after a Liquid Liquid song) are DJ teams who prove the old adage “two heads are better than one.” Or rather,…
Anyone who has copped a broken beat twelve-inch over the last few years has probably stumbled across the unusual name Bugz in the Attic splashed across the record label. This murky alliance of DJs, producers, engineers, and musicians has made a name for itself in hot West London clubs by…
Ten years ago Sven Väth was trying to conquer America. He had a contract with Warner Bros. and a Los Angeles outpost for his acclaimed Frankfurt-based record labels Harthouse and Eye Q. But America wasn’t ready for the techno and trance sounds of Germany. Väth’s Warner Bros. contract fizzled after…
Each conference brings a buzzword for the latest micro-strain. In 2004 it was grime, a hybrid of hip-hop and jungle with UK MC Dizzee Rascal as its poster boy. This year finds hipsters talking about dirty house, a more electro-leaning, rhythmically playful incarnation of good ol’ fashioned house. The music…
In the seven years since the Ultra Music Festival began as a neat little block party starring Florida’s own Rabbit in the Moon on a fenced-off section of sand behind the Outback Steakhouse on Collins Avenue, some of its most outspoken critics have been those people you’d expect to have…
If you haven’t heard the music of Maya Arulpragasam, you aren’t alone. But visit any online music-geek mecca, like the MP3 post Fluxblog (www.fluxblog.org) or the tempest-in-a-text-post board ILM (I Love Music) (ilx.wh3rd.net), and you’ll be smacked with the feeling of missing out. As the definitive word-of-fingers sensation, her debut…
There are only a handful of DJs whose names resonate beyond dance music: John Digweed is one of them. Back in the salad days of the late Nineties, when the genre exploded from an underground cultural renaissance to a global industry, the British-born Digweed and his frequent partner Sasha invaded…
The shoe-gazer phenomenon of the early Nineties exploded out of the UK like a giant sunburst of swirling guitars, distorted synths, and cascades of feedback. By the end of the decade the heat of the movement had waned. Now Germany’s Ulrich Schnauss is breathing new life into its ethereal textures…
Most internationally respected DJs are known for spinning only one genre of dance music. Not so with San Francisco’s Mark Farina, who is comfortable plying nightclubs with jackin’ grooves one night and down-tempo, instrumental hip-hop flavored “Mushroom Jazz” the next. In the late Eighties the Chicago native participated in the…
German house producer Ian Pooley’s repertoire ranges from the airy, ambient Euro-house of his brilliant Meridian to his Brazilian house anthem with Esthero “Balmes (A Better Life).” As one of a handful of house producers to earn a major-label deal in the past few years (via his now-defunct relationship with…
Do all the New York hipsters and Miami club kids know where mash-up — mixing up records from disparate genres — really came from? It’s something hip-hop and disco DJs have been doing for ages, and their modern counterpart is expert party-rockin’ DJs such as Z-Trip. Raised in Phoenix and…
They say everything’s bigger in Texas, so Austin’s Dustin “D:Fuse” Fusilier, who Urb magazine rated as its second-favorite DJ at last year’s conference, is reckoned to be a contender this year with his expansive musical approach. D:Fuse plays drums (using the Roland V-Pad) during his sets, and he also sings…
David Morales spins true, classic New York house, the pumping, four-to-the-floor, body-moving tracks that everyone, whether elitist, anti-dance, or rockist still gives props to. His most recent album, 2 Worlds Collide, was one of the best released last year, thanks to the blazing first single and collaboration with Tamra Keenan,…
Record companies love to say that their song did well at the Winter Music Conference. “This was the hit of WMC!” looks great splashed across the sales sheets and press releases. (If I had a nickel for every hype sheet I get with this absurd claim on it, well, I…
Is the Winter Music Conference ready to grow up? Praga Bhandari thinks so. “You could say our event represents a maturing of the music audience,” says the drummer for Formula One, a band that specializes in “dirty rock and roll.” The New York City outfit will be one of several…
As possibly the only genre in modern dance music that Britain can truly call its own, drum and bass is a U.K. phenomenon that has been slow to catch on in the United States. In the last year, however, the style has gone through a period of malaise in its…
Producing and reproducing crisply delineative yet densely rhythmic textural techno, Detroit-bred DJ/producer Jeff Mills weaves a nuanced mesh of pointillist percussion, ominous ambience, and undulating synths with pinpoint accuracy. His mixes are considered “minimalist” because they don’t rely on the push and pull of peak-and-valley pump. Like snow flurries, his…
Every few years since the mid-Eighties, the true revival of “electro” has been heralded. The depth charge 808 drum machine and scratchy freestyle funk of Miami bass can be felt in everything from dirty South crunk to Detroit ghetto-tech to Orlando-based DJ Icey’s Florida breaks to the output of European…
The word “party” can mean so many things. Saying that you “like to party” could mean that you enjoy attending get-togethers with your friends. It might also be a sign that you’re down to swap sexual partners or purchase narcotics, depending on the conversation. No doubt Drew Daniel, one-half of…
The cult of superstar DJ, after turning a handful of artists into the closest thing to a rock star the dance world has, seemingly has disappeared from the lexicon of the trend-obsessed music press. As progressive house titan Sasha laughs, “We’re not flavor of the month. The honeymoon period is…
