Review of wmc/ultra with HD footage

[kaib0rg]

Note: The footage included in this thread was filmed by myself with a high definition camcorder. This is not footage taken by someone's cell phone while they're jumping up and down. Of course youtube tears the quality down, but I think outside of what Ultra shot professionally, this is probably the best footage available (at least on youtube).

Let me preface this review with the fact that I talked a lot of smack about Ultra before I went (especially with comparisons to other festivals happening around the same time in Europe) and I'm taking none of it back. The washed up 90's headliners were still as washed up as ever and this festival was the biggest exploitation of rave culture I've ever seen in my life (which I'm referring to from here on out as "corporate rave"). With that out of the way...

I went to Ultra Music Festival this year with 3 people that run a local rave promotion company that I work for (Seismic Bass). At Seismic, we're all about the breaks. We've brought in D-lerium & Faze, Keith Mackenzie, tons of local breaks talent and will soon be hosting an event with Reid Speed and Annalyze as the main headliners. So naturally, Florida would be like a second home to us due to the nature of breaks history. The car ride took about 22 hours, none of which I had to drive (there or back) in a Kia Rondo (little SUV). The three people I was with were semi-connected in the DJ circuit, and more than semi-frustrating to deal with due to their incessant bickering (example: two of them faught for 20 minutes on whether or not all dogs truly go to heaven).

Day 1, Wednesday

The drive. Oi. We left Mokena, IL at about 1pm after having to deal with Enterprise screwing up our car rental and giving us a small SUV instead of a 4dr Nissan Altima. We drove in pairs, as only two people on the trip were insured to drive the vehicle. One person drove, the other person helped them stay awake (splashing water in their face, sexual favours, you know the deal :P). I was filming for most of the way down and slept for about an hour total (with 3 hours of sleep the previous night). You could slowly see the landscaping changing from grays, to yellows, to greens, to blues.

Day 2, Thursday

We arrive in Miami at about 8-9am. Sun, sky and palm trees as far as the eye could see. We check into our hotel and the rest of the crew goes down to the pool while I desperately try to figure out a way to get on the net. It was 13 dollars a day for internet and no wi-fi in the surrounding area. One of the roommates complained about something or other and we got it free for a day, so I scrambled to get all of the ultra/afterparty addresses into my phone for the rest of the weekend while I could.

We headed out to our first party of the trip which was Bring on the Beats.


Pretty stellar lineup for a daytime party that was free (yay for guestlist). Day was shaping up great. I met a few poppers at this party (Poppin' Pimpus, Precise and a few others) and we all got down into the late hours of the evening. No one dared go into the pool (shrug) but the women here, as you'll notice a trend everywhere, were SMOKIN' hot. The party was a huge networking frenzy for DJ's and promoters alike. I basically just danced most of the day/night and didn't converse with many people.

We left the party about 11pm. I'm pretty sober by now and the rest of the crew is drunk off their asses, so I end up driving us back to our hotel, getting some food on the way, dropping the kids off and heading out to my first afterparty of the trip at a place called Churchills in the ghetto of Miami to see edIT and Jimmy Edgar.



This was the nerd night. I got there at about midnight after 4-5 bums tried to charge me money to park in free spots in this ghetto area of town. I decided at first to not bring my camera in because the place was seriously looming with about ~15 bums on the venue's block alone. Admission was 12 bucks, which in my opinion is fucking amazing just for edIT alone, and I'd get a bonus of Jimmy Edgar as well. I was pissed off at my drunken roommates because they were making me late to my party (which was supposed to be 9p-3:30a) and I thought I was going to miss a main act. I get there at midnight and there are still CD's being played in the venue, not a single act has gone on yet. I'm having a look around the place when I spot him...edIT is sitting at the bar across the room. I'm in shock. I figured he didn't show up yet and that's what was going on with the show not starting, but no...he's just chillin. So I head on over, introduce myself, tell him I'm a fan of his work and if he had plans to work with any east coast rappers in the future, shook the [s]God's[/s] man's hand and went on my way. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl that just got Justin Timberlake's autograph. ^.^

I endure two lame acts that start around 12;30 (Noise bullshit and two terrible emcees) and Machine Drum comes on and I'm blown away by his live PA. See, I've been to several live PA's before and they generally bore me because it seems like the artist is so timid to do anything fancy because god forbid he can't pause the session and start over again. Machine Drum would have NONE OF THIS. Dude went off like whoah. All kinds of amazing live glitch PA work. I was so impressed by his set that I darted out to the car to grab the camera, damning the consequences. I got back in and started to film, but only caught the last track he played out before a female emcee named Adequate (sp?) got on stage and stunk up the place with Machine Drum making hot beats in the background. Here's his set with emceee adequate:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Next up is edIT, the main man. It was ~2:30am by the time he went on so I was getting kinda scared for time. He got on his macbook with an additional peice of live remixing hardware and started up with some CARM classics, glitching and remixing parts of them as he went on with his additional peice of hardware. As the set went on he deviated further and further from his released production tracks until he started playing tracks that I've yet to hear. I was so excited, hearing these amazing tracks live with a killer sound system...and then all of a sudden the lights went on and the music cut off. :-/ It was 3am and the venue owner told everyone to get out. Not only did they cut edIT's set in half, but Jimmy Edgar (the second headliner) didn't even get to play! Someone (I'm assuming Jimmy's manager/promoter) got on the mic and was like...aww hell naw, Jimmy's playing. So edIT said a few words, packed up, and Jimmy went on to drop a 15 minute set. You read that right...15 minutes, and then he got shut off and we were all told to leave. Moral of the story?--Churchill's = shady and poorly ran. I thought it was pretty well known in the business to not put your headliners on as the very last act. You usually put them on between 11p-1am because that's peak party time, and then save the rest of your locals for the end. Here's edIT's set from the night:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

and Jimmy Edgar's 15 minute set:
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

[kaib0rg]

Day 3, Friday

I slept in at the hotel while the other 3 went out to the beach to meet up with some chicago locals and oggle the Miami beachgirls. I don't know if anyone's noticed by now, but I'm not much of a "fun in the sun" kind of guy. My life starts at night and sleeps during the day. I have pasty white skin and that's how I'd like to keep it. The others claimed they wanted to be at Ultra at 4pm sharp, but of course they're slackers and we ended up getting there at 6pm (with lots of bitching and whining and fighting along the way). Parking was 20 dollars but only about a block away from the festival and right next door to the afterparty we had planned on attending so it's all good. I was informed by the crew that I couldn't bring my backpack or camcorder (or camera) into the event so I regretfully left it behind in the car. We try to buy our 2 day passes and low and behold...the ticket price has almost DOUBLED at the door. The website claimed the price was $130 for a 2day pass, when in reality it was $230 at the door. We were all on a very tight budget so we found 1day passes for 60 dollars a peice from a scalper out front. After going through the line I realised that I TOTALLY could've gotten my camcorder in. They were barely checking people! After seeing about 50 people with camcorders and no press badges in the event, I was pissed but had fully planned on getting mine in the next day.

The acts that I saw today were:

Crystal Method: They were okay, nothing fantastic. Sat on the ground most of the time watching people do Poi.
BT: Awesome performance. Live vocals from the girl who did "Dreaming." BT played guitar and keys live. Overall it was amazing. Lots of classics, mostly off of Movement in Still Life.
Rabbit in the Moon: Everyone told me that I have to see them at least once. This was my first time seeing them and frankly I was disgusted by the gimmicky theatrics. The performance screamed "rave exploitation" worse than any tiestovanoakendyke "This is Rave" album in existance. RITM is to the rave scene as ICP is to the hiphop scene. A huge gimmick with no real substance.
Jackal & Hyde: Tore the roof off the place. It was funny to go from such an over the top shitfest that is RITM to an amazing MUSICAL performance by Jackal & Hyde. They were out before their set signing autographs and giving away free water/glowstuff to the front stagers. When they got on stage, they were tucked away in the back-left corner in the shadows. NO GIMMICKS NECESSARY, simply pounding out the bass, tearing shit up. I loved every minute.

We missed Dynamix II to hit up the Future Sound of Breaks afterparty. Two of the people I came down with had headaches/whatever so they decided to drive back to the hotel and myself and the remaining person hit the Future Sound of Breaks party guestlisted in, ftw.

The line was over a city block long and 3-4 people wide. We walked right past, it was beautiful. ^.^ We get into this venue and let me tell you...it was a LABYRINTH OF WIN! I don't even remember how many rooms it had, I'm just glad I found my way out! Place was nuts. Packed with people, bboy circles, dope music, the whole 9. Saw Jen Lasher, Baby Anne, K. Kuts, Freestylers, and got to hang out in the main room's DJ booth with keith mackenzie and flipside while Icey was spinning. Sick fuckin times. Lots of dancing to be had! And of course...the womenz.

Day 4, Saturday

Ultra ran from 12pm to 12am today and once again the "we're going to get there when it opens" statement came out of someone's mouth. HAH. Anyways we got there at about 4pm or so. We tried to scalp more tickets but it just wasn't happening so we ended up paying $115 for the day (yar). It was blazing hot outside and I was DETERMINED to get my camcorder inside today. I have a special compartment for my camcorder that's semi-hidden, so I packed in some extra clothes/towels into the normal compartment and snuck my way through the security check. YAY! Acts today were:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] Loved it. Was a taaaad cheesy but he rocked it. Although the superstar DJ douche attitude was definately present. He played a lot of tracks that I hadn't heard before which was really nice and DIDNT' play "punk" which was 10x more nice cuz I hate that track.
Armin Van Buuren: Waited through the last 30 minutes of his set because I wanted a good filming spot for Moby, who I thought was on next. Turns out that I was totally at the wrong stage and Erik Morillo went on next. Needless to say, van Buuren sucked majorly with his cheesy trance anthems and I got the hell out of there as soon as Morillo dropped his first house track.
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] Meeeeeeeeh. Better than expected but quite frankly I wouldve liked to hear a lot of MOBY's tracks. I didn't hear one Moby track for the 30 minutes I was there. He had great stage presence though.
Freestylers: I saw him/them 4 times throughout the weekend. Typical breaks set, nothing special. Was basically the same thing all 4 times, and the 1 time I saw him in chicago a few weeks ago.
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] Also saw him/them 4 times. Yet another typical breaks set. Great visuals though.
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] Easily the most disappointing set of the weekend. This shit was PATHETIC and I have footage to prove it. Looped samples...over...and over...and over. Some classic Underworld tracks but barely. Visuals/Lighting was insanity but the performance was lackluster and the music was the worst I heard all weekend. Hell, they played a looped vocal sample for 3-4 minutes of "can you feel the bass?" and then when they FINALLY dropped a bassline it was 1/3 of the (already weak) bassline that Meat Katie was dropping one stage over in the Breaks Arena.
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] Better than expected, but still...another typical breaks set.
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] AMAZING! So many classic tracks got dropped. Lots of dope remixes and new stuff that just got released on Hybrid Remixed. I was really hoping for Finished Symphony (the track we used for the DEMF day clip), but I got Everything In Its Right Place (hybrid remix) instead which was also fantastic. They gave away about 20-30 Hybrid Remixed CD's at the end of the performance to the front stagers. I was busy holding my camera. ^.^
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] I'm so glad for slacker.com because it introduced me to this fantastic producer. Otherwise I would've been walking around aimlessly waiting for Uberzone to go on or watching Underworld eat a fat dick on stage instead of seeing Hyper. He blew me away, nuff said. He also played my favourite Hyper track, which is the one that slacker first introduced me with--here's footage of that:
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]: HANDS DOWN the best set of Ultra. I've seen them do a Live PA once before but wasn't paying much attention. This time through they had my FULL attention. One person on live drums, one person on a peice of hardware. This performance KILLED. When I wasn't filming, I was dancing, dead tired. We had just met up with some people from chicago and after the set was done I had realised I was just extremely rude to everyone, blowing them all off mid-conversations to dance my ass off. This set rocked so damn hard.

I had planned on going to Revenge of the Nerds 2087 afterparty to see edIT (hopefully a full set this time) and Richard Devine but I was so dead tired from the day and hybrid/hyper/uberzone killed it so hard that I just decided to go back to the hotel with the rest of the crew.

Day 5/6, Sunday/Monday

The long drive home. I still didn't have to drive.

[Seismic Bass]

hey how about a thanks rick bob and colleen for inviting me a long and hooking me up with guestlist to bring on the beats and FSOB and for putting the whole trip together instead of bitching about how we 'bickered' so much?

[kaib0rg]

Originally Posted by Seismic Bass

hey how about a thanks rick bob and colleen for inviting me a long and hooking me up with guestlist to bring on the beats and Future Sound of Breaks and for putting the whole trip together instead of bitching about how we 'bickered' so much?

Thanks.

Even though I couldve done it by myself for cheaper. :P

[Orange Glaze]

Fantastic footage, thanks for sharing. Saw Uberzone couple years ago at a big fest and they blew away all the so-called "Big Names."