News Archive

Today’s festivities started earlier than usual. We headed down to Ocean Drive for some breakfast with the London crew to catch up on their stories of the week’s shenanigans.

On our way down we walked past Miami Ink’s studio and noticed that Darren Brass was sitting outside. We chatted for a bit and also noticed Chris Nunez sitting in the near-by restaurant. Apparently they were filming that day for the current season.

We decided to head back up to our hotel after dinner and do some shopping before heading over to the Beatport party at the Remix Hotel. We ran into Paris Hilton on our travels, which was quite the spectacle to be seen. You never get a true showing of the paparazzi until you see them in their prime as they were definitely out in full force.

After some quick shopping we headed down to the Beatport party. Our goal was to catch some of fellow Canadian DJ Richie Hawtin as he is always on fire during his WMC events. We ran into Greg Benz and his wife and friends and a slew of other people, so the party vibe was top notch. Sadly his set was delayed and we had already planned to meet with Josh Gabriel for a lecture on Logic Pro. Following Josh’s demonstration was a lecture by BT himself on Logic as well as a private 5.1 surround screening of This Binary Universe. Again, sad we had to miss this but we needed to head back to the hotel to grab some dinner and prepare for the night’s events down at Nikki Beach.

We arrived to Nikki Beach with Filo and Peri on the decks rocking out to a decent sized crowd. The club is very dark in the evening as there is no lighting system on the dance floor so that was sort of a surprise. As far as we knew, the lineup was to include Andy Moor, Cosmic Gate, Blank and Jones, and Talla 2XLC. However when we arrived the bill had nearly pulled a complete 180. Now the lineup read Filo and Peri, Sander van Doorn, Christopher Lawrence, Above and Beyond, and Andy Moor; so for me this was better than expected.

Sander and crew arrived and he hit the decks with “By Any Demand� just as he did on Wednesday. The place was on fire and really receptive to his banging tech-trance style.

Chris Lawrence came on after SVD but the club wasn’t too interested in his style and the vibe started to drain and the dance floor began to thin.

Above and Beyond arrived a little while later with quite a surprised expression on their face to how dark the club looked. The sound was also pretty mediocre (the VIP didn’t even have any speakers at all and the roof was leaking). After a lot of discussion and waiting around, Jono and Paavo decided to try and get Andy to switch timeslots as he plays a bit higher energy set to try and bring the vibe back up.

Andy arrived and started on the decks with a more housey-trance feel to which the crowd loved: the vibe was restored. Pounding out tracks from his AVA Recordings label along with quite a few new gems, the dance floor quickly returned to its capacity. However, after about 45 minutes he had lost his patience with the monitor cutting in and out and handed the stage over to A&B.

The lads came out with “Black is the Colour� to quite a receptive crowd. They were all ready for a full-on hands-in-the-air evening. As always, the tune of the night for me from A&B was “Good For Me�. We met up with Kristina Sky and Topher Jones out on the patio which was fantastic. Everyone seemed to be in a great mood and happy to party on the beach.

All in all it was a night of events and a lot of confusion, but I think things ended up pretty well. Now to rest up for the final evening of shenanigans for the conference.