Fred Again.., Caribou, and Jeff Mills Kicked Off III Points 2023 Day One

Last night, III Points returned to Wynwood, taking over the Mana complex and spilling onto the streets. It has been a decade since the festival's debut, and it's certainly grown since then. Across eight stages, it delivered the kind of experience that festival-goers crave.

Friday was a complete sellout, the grounds so packed that if you were used to past festivals, it almost felt jarring. That shouldn't have come as a complete surprise, considering that Fred Again.. and Skrillex pulled the largest crowds the Mind Melt stage has ever seen.

If you attended last year's festival, you probably noticed some changes to the layout in 2023. Gone is the Main Frame stage inside the RC Cola structure, and the Isotropic stage got a new placement. Inside the convention center, the roller rink lacked a DJ booth. The tweaks helped to minimize the sound bleed that tended to plague III Points, but the Berghain-esque feeling of the Main Frame stage will be missed.

Beyond the changes, day one of III Points 2023 brought a multitude of memorable performances.

Explosions in the Sky

A few years back, a band like Explosions in the Sky wouldn't have been out of place at III Points. The festival has hosted many live acts over the years — like Mac DeMarco, Metronomy, LCD Soundsystem, Erykah Badu, the Strokes, Gorillaz, King Krule, and the xx. But this year's lineup leans so hard into dance music that the Texas band felt like an outlier, a fact  its members acknowledged as they opened their set. That said, Explosions in the Sky's sound is tailor-made for a festival setting. The post-rockers were there to perform their 2003 album, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, in its entirety. Upon its release, Cold Dead Place was met with universal critical acclaim, and last night it was easy to see why. The album only consists of five songs but clocks in at a respectable 45 minutes — and that's exactly what the crowd got. But from the opener, "First Breath After Coma," to the closing cut, "Your Hand in Mine," it was hard not to be transfixed by the melodies. As III Points continues to grow, I hope it never stops delivering this kind of experience. Explosions in the Sky didn't pull the kinds of crowds to the Mind Melt stage that Fred Again.. and Skrillex did, but sometimes you need to remind everyone of the magic that happens when a group of people come together to make music. Jose D. Duran

::Blue::

For Danny Daze’s ::Blue::, you entered the dome, sat on beanbag chairs, and craned your neck to the ceiling. Beeps and boops echoed out of the speakers. You felt like Skrillex and Fred Again.. were miles away. A white dot appeared on top and flickered to the music before evolving into sprawling sacred geometry across the dome. The projections grew in strength as Daze's music grew in complexity, with clear homages to the IDM movement, like Aphex Twin and Miami's Schematic records. You traveled into a nuclear reactor on one cut; ancient protozoa crawled through the walls and swayed to the music's low vibrations on another. The crowd remained silent. Some held hands, others flicked their hands to the hi-hats. Then it turned off. For two minutes, the production coordinator scrambled to resume ::Blue:: Then the visuals and music hit again. "It was just an intermission," quipped one attendee. Then it went out again for a few seconds; the audience groaned and cheered once it resumed.The pause took us all out of the head-high our eyes had created, but that was a minor blip compared to the next-level production value of ::Blue:: It's another signpost of Daze's unfailing creativity. He led us through his spaceways — planets, galaxies — and his dimensions. Grant Albert

Caribou

Dan Snaith is one of the few acts pulling double duty this weekend. (The other is Danny Daze, who'll follow up his audiovisual installation ::Blue:: with a B2B DJ set with Daniel Avery on Saturday.) Snaith, who will appear on Saturday under his more dance-floor-oriented moniker, Daphni, took over the Mind Melt stage last night as Caribou. As Caribou, his sound leans more into psychedelia, synthpop, and electronica. I have a lot of affinity for Caribou — as an elder statesman of Miami's nightlife scene, I remember when you couldn't walk into any of the city's several indie-dance parties without hearing "Odessa" spill out of the sound system. Sure enough, I was quickly transported to that era as Snaith churned out live renditions of "Out Love" and "You Can Do It." All told, it was a groove-laden set with plenty of synths, a live drummer, and Snaith's angelic vocals. Jose D. Duran

D. Tiffany B2B Roza Terenzi

S3quenc3, a great slap of steel scaffolding and LED panels, is a skeleton of a stage that demands a ton of musical calories to fill the air. Generally speaking, the music of Canada's D. Tiffany and Australia's Rosa Terenszi sways to the chiller side, but when they produce together, the beat picks up and things get more abrasive — the prime example being their speedy collaboration album, Edge of Innocence. Yet, the two threw so much hard-hitting techno into Friday night that any chance of bubbly house overtures melted away. The duo played rave-induced anthem after anthem while remaining locked in a groove. The bass rumbled, they indulged their penchant for breaks, and the music grew meaner and more aggressive by the minute. From time to time, a pause was introduced. Only then did you realize it's close to hitting midnight, and your feet are starting to ache. Grant Albert

Fred Again..

Boiler Room and B3Bs with Skrillex and Four Tet would make you think England's latest and biggest electronic star was a beat-craving party animal. NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts would have you believe Fred Again.. (AKA Fred Gibson) is a sullen artist who bleeds onto the keys of his pianos. Miami was introduced to both as Gibson detoxed the audience while simultaneously polluting them. Gibson began with "Kyle (I Found You)" in collaboration with Kyle Tran Myrrh. Roughly ten minutes in, the sun-drunk melodies against the sky's crescent moon had freed the crowd of all the world's ills. Yet, as if as a painter frustrated with his work, Gibson tossed it all aside to go all in with his stagemate, Tony Friend, to bring in old UK dub and four-on-the-floor beats. The crowd exploded, unclasping from the embrace of their special someone to go wild with a brutal two-step. Like a child let loose at Guitar Center, Gibson fidgeted with his equipment to chop, slice, loop, and cue. He shouted out Skrillex and played their track "Rumble" and Skrillex's "Ratata" — and then, as if to say, "To hell with it!" brought back softer sounds hitting hard again. This mania continued for some time. It was chaotic, it was madness, it was lovely and strange. It was Fred Again.. bringing every damn emotion and beat to Miami. Grant Albert

Mad Kelly

Half the fun of III Points is stumbling onto an act you've never heard before. I usually study the lineup days in advance, Googling names I don't recognize to decide whether to check them out. Mad Kelly was one of those acts. He's a local guy who is daring to mix early-aughts nu-metal (think Korn, Orgy, Rob Zombie, System of a Down) with electronica. (Gen Z — what will they think of next!) It shouldn't work, but it does. At the Grand Central stage, only 50 or so people were gathered to hear his set, but it might as well have been 1,000. Along with his backing band, Kelly gave it his all and was charismatic to boot, looking like a pink-haired cross between Post Malone and Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland. I'm probably not going to convert anyone reading this into a Mad Kelly stan, but do yourself a favor a check out his surprisingly adept nu-metal twist on No Doubt's "Hella Good." Kelly's hooked me, and I'm interested to see where this takes him. Jose D. Duran

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs

TEED has played in Miami numerous times over the years, but the last time I saw the British producer live was at the Electric Pickle in 2012. At that show, he memorably wore a footy pajama costume adorned with feathers. A decade later, Orlando Higginbottom's performance has grown leaps and bounds. At the Sector 3 stage, he performed tracks like "Sound & Rhythm" and "American Dream Part II" to great effect, giving the energetic crowd plenty of reason to jerk their bodies to the beats. While Higginbottom's costuming was more subdued than his 2012 performance, his stage presence and production have grown. A decade ago, although certainly adept, he came off a bit reserved. But last night he was far from that. It's got me wondering what his performance will be like next time I catch him, in 2033. Jose D. Duran

Jeff Mills

There was little doubt the crowd would be treated to a master class from a DJ's DJ. Lithe and shy, Mills played a deluge of the hard-hitting anthems minute for minute. He dusted off the shelf and brought a Roland TR-909 drum machine, a pivotal piece of equipment that ushered in electronic music as we know it. Mills delivered warp-speed techno, simultaneously forward-thinking and a homage to the rave days, without feeling forced. He hardly looked up as each track banged and banged, going at the drum machine and adding crashing cymbals and kicks to his bullet train that took the crowd for the ride of their life. When he introduced a new element, it was as if the knobs were hot coals he hardly dared touch for fear of burning the seamless transitions. Of course, he played his 1996 opus, "The Bells," which never fails to wreak havoc. Mills swayed occasionally, but he's more the conductor built to send attendees back to a different time. If we're truly embracing the '90s again, this isn't a bad way to go about it. Grant Albert

Alice Glass

As Glass launched into "Forgiveness," she proffered some heady advice: "You don't have to forgive anyone you don't want to." It's a mantra Glass adopted some time ago, trusting the power of herself and her music to land her on her feet. "I'm happy we all out here together — just us. Just me and you," she declared. She and she screamed. She sat on the stage and contorted her body to her pounding, glitch-ridden music. Her partner, Jupiter Keyes, transitioned from banging away at synths to strumming a guitar and beating a drum. With each song, Glass thanked the audience in the bubbliest, friendliest way imaginable, as if the prior screams and electronica had been a mirage. She played the seismic tracks off her latest album, Prey//IV, but the highlight may have been "Celestica." It would be reasonable for Glass to want to move on from the trauma she endured as a member of Crystal Castles, but in reaching back for that song, she reclaimed not only herself but the crowd, which went wild when as those chords rang out. It sounded as fresh as ever with a new Alice Glass. Grant Albert