Check out Crossfade's full 45-photo slideshow of Hard Miami Day Two at Grand Central -- plus the review of Hard Miami and Mad Decent's Moombahton Massive.
Hard Miami 2012
With Boys Noize, Busy P, Brodinski and others
Grand Central, Miami
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Better Than: Admitting the hard electro era of 2007 ever ended.
What's the only thing that can top a night full of the best moombahton DJs the world has to offer? A night full of motherfucking Ed Banger DJs. Duh.
The French electro house label is quite possibly the coolest group of producers on the scene, and Hard put Busy P, Brodinski, and Gesaffelstein together with German techno stud Boys Noize for a lineup so disgustingly hip that bros couldn't even see it.
Amtrac opened the night with a set full of originals, followed by an hour of hard and funky electro jams from LA duo Oliver. The place wasn't quite as full of bodies as day one of Hard Miami with Mad Decent and Moombahton Massive.
But there were probably twice the amount of cigarettes being smoked. French electro house DJs actually need nicotine to breathe. Or at least it seems that way.
Hard man Destructo (AKA founder Gary Richards) came on next, taking things in a deeper and techier direction. Some dancers got up on the stage and started going ham, much to the DJ's delight. But it
was nothing compared to the near-collapse the previous night's near-collapse during Diplo's set.
Mr. Richards kept the hard and driving tech rhythms going until 1
a.m. when Ed Banger boy Brodinski took over control. Right away, he dove into
some nasty, glitchy shit. He teased the crowd with a remix of "Levels" and he got
everyone gyrating to "Let the Beat Control Your Body."
He bounced to the beat from side to side with his eyes
closed, just feelin it. Everything got sexy when he dropped "Booty Clap." But
that was still only the beginning.
Next, Busy P hit the stage hard, opening his set with Justice's "Genesis" and letting it play as he raised his arms to make the group's sign of the cross. Arm crosses popped up throughout the crowd, then the song dropped into
a more than massive hip-hop-style remix with more edge on it than the Grand
Canyon.
Every hand in the house went up when Mr. P played "Da Funk." Everyone repped the funkiest robots alive with the pyramid sign. And when Busy cut the music, everyone sang the song, even though there were no words.
The hits kept coming with "Nightcall" and "Window Licker."
It just kept getting darker and sexier by the minute. But things hit another
level when he went into the late, great DJ Mehdi's "Pocket Piano" and paused to
raise his lighter in memoriam. The crowd responded in kind, no cell phones,
that shit was serious.
Come 3 a.m., Busy P cut the music and mumbled some sort of
lovey stuff about Boys Noize being the man and "Waddup, America" in his heavy
French accent. And then shit got real when Boys Noize (AKA Alexander Ridha) opened his set with an unreleased track, referred to on the internet as "XTC."
Ridha is a master mixer, always tweaking something. He
does not simply play and mix songs. He manipulates them into whole new beastly
creatures on the spot. Even when working hard over three or four decks
at once, he finds time to take a break and dance it out. And every time he puts
his hand up in the air, you know some ridiculous drop is coming your way.
Dude can be pretty theatrical. At one point in his set, he
dropped down below the table and rose up slowly in line with the intensity of a
single, continuous chord. By that point, the dance floor had been converted
into a church of noize, and he was the pope in a smiley-face baseball cap.
Following his funky and challenging set was the always dark,
always awesome Gesaffelstein, who likewise put the mixer effects to good use.
His elbows swung wildly back and forth as he put those knobs to work.
The crowd that night was super loyal, most of them sticking
around until just before 5 in the morning. They were rewarded with
some more Daft Punk, as Gesaffelstein did tight work all over "Rollin' and
Scratchin'" and more hand pyramids went up to the ceiling.
He teased everyone, starting and stopping the record just to
start it again. But finally, he slowed the beat down and signaled everyone head for
the doors with the last jog-wheel rewind of the night.
Critic's Notebook
Personal Bias: I really just wish Ed Banger was a real dude so he could be my chain-smoking French boyfriend.
The Crowd: Electro hipsters in tight pants who wouldn't be caught dead playing with glowsticks.
Special Shout-out: Way to celebrate your birthday with the best party ever, Glenjamin.
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