Trance Takes Miami

Miami’s annual Winter Music Conference descended upon a rainy, cool South beach again this year, but the biggest difference was the amount of trance acts performing at different places through out the week. For years Miami and WMC has been considered a house event, even though Paul Van Dyk is the “God-father” of the Ultra Music Festival. Well what happened to change all this you ask, simple, the promoters had their ‘ear to the ground’, reading forums from this site and others, looking at the popular electronic dance tracks, and looking at the popularity of trance DJs on Myspace and various magazine polls. Made Events is the perfect example of this, they are one of the more interactive promoters, and always bring to New York the trance acts the fans want to see. They were the first ones to bring Sander Van Doorn to New York City, and now they have taken over the conference with their legendary parties, including the techno/minimal Sunday School for Degenerates, which after only its second year, is a must attend event.
Here is a rundown of some of this year’ best acts, venues and promoters.

Wet Grooves- They are one of the promoters that really takes part in message boards and did a great job of securing top trance acts from around the world. They hosted daytime parties at Nikki beach and The Shelbourne poolside and night time at venues such as Ink.. Some of their DJs included George Acosta, Cosmic Gate Blank & Jones, Andy Moor, Paul Oakenfold, Filo & Perry and L.A.’s own Christopher Lawrence. The problem with Wet Grooves is they focus in too much on cheesy lines like” bigger, better, wetter”, and girls with bikinis (which I am not complaining about), if some work would have went into the outdoor sound system at Nikki beach, which was a setp down from my car radio, they would have been alright.

Ultra Music Festival- 2 days instead of 1, and the return of Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, and Sasha & Digweed, who all were not part of last year’s fest, marked the return of a strong trance presence to the annual outdoor event. Ferry and Lawrence on Day 2 playing back to back was great for the trance heads, Tiesto dropped many of new tracks off of the forth coming “Elements of Life”, opening with Ten Seconds Before Sunrise, but the biggest reactions came from his older tracks “Lethal Industry” and Flight 643, a great mix of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” and of course Joop’s “The Future”. The main problem with this set is not Tiesto it’s the fact that he was up against Sander Kleinenberg who was on the other stage playing exactly opposite Tiesto on Day 1, this makes little sense, since they share similar audiences, it would have made more sense for Sander to open up, rather than Fedde Le Grand. Day 2 was highlighted by Sander Van Doorn’s set which came after a rain drenched set by Erick Morillo, when the stage lights and video screens stopped working and Morillo was left with a sparse crowd due to torrential down pours.
Sander followed that with his typical tech-trance banging set, one of the opening tracks was “Black is The Colour” and then ripped it from there, coming before Rabbit In the Moon, and just as the rain swept way, was the perfect time for Van Doorn to get maximum exposure to a crowd who may have not been familiar with him, and he seized the opportunity bringing great energy back to Ultra’s main stage and showing why he is the new Dutch Trance star.

Made Events- If you just spent the week attending their parties, you would have walked away more than happy. The 6 hour Armin Van Buuren at pawn Shop was the highlight of their schedule, because not only was it just Armin, but the venue itself, which is simple and plain, let the clubbers and the DJ supply the vibe, and they did times a thousand. The next night Made presented Armada with Armin, Markus Shulz, and Rank 1, most of the crowd had just spent the day soaked at Ultra and yet they found the spirit to party some more. Armin’s track of the night was “Mindcircus” when club went nuts. Above & beyond at Club BED was perfect, unlike some producers, they are not afraid to drop their own hits, and when “Alone Tonight” came on everyone rushed to the stage to sing along with the most beautiful vocals. The surprise of the conference was how well Gabriel Dresden did, they are well known for their trance and house remixes, and commercial production, but their events were packed and their mixing, almost a lost art in today’s electronic world, was totally on point. They mixed trance right on top of some ringing minimal beats which had the crowds bouncing.

Club Space- The problem every year seems to be the disorganization, this year was a little better, but not by much. This event can be summed up like this, at an Apple demonstration of Logic Paul Van Dyk was the narrater, after he was done he took questions fro the audience, the last one was from a younger fan who said “Paul can you put me on the list for Space tonight”, PVD responded “ I can’ event get my wife in”! That says it all, people who went to see Kleinenberg on the terrace could not evn get upstairs.

Motion @ Karu- The flyer listed Sander Van Doorn, Above & Beyond, Blank & Jones, and a special appearance by “The King”, by now you may have heard that was the “trance-God’ himself, Tiesto, who followed his own party at Mansion with an appearance at this fantastic line-up. The venue was small and had an intimate feeling because they did not promote until way past everyone was already going to Armada at Twilo. If they had given a little more advance notice and promoted some more, this could have been one of the more exciting conference evnts. Sander spinning “Grasshopper’ and Control Freak, made the crowd move, and when “ The King” dropped by he spun some of his vocal tacks form the upcoming album.

Miami finally gave Trance the spotlight it deserves, and Sander Van Doorn and Above & Beyond really took the torch and showed why they will be moving up on the DJ polls while other DJs: Ferry Corsten, Cosmic Gate, and Rank 1 reminded the fans why they love them in the first place.