Ultra Music Festival: a two-day extravaganza made up almost entirely of Electronic Dance Music. Take a moment and think about that, two days—20 hours total—of dancing. And I’m not talking about your grandma’s foxtrot here, people, nor am I referring to the typical head-bobbing concert fare of yore. I speak of sweaty, fist-pumping, hip-shaking, foot-stomping, neck-dislocating, all-out absurdity. To be sure, one does not and should not come to Ultra unless they are ready to get extreme.
Unlike more typical music festivals (and I use the word typical very loosely here), the Ultra lineup does not cater to the general music-loving public. Rather, it is very specific in its aim, and that aim is EDM. Ultra-goers came in all kinds of kooky outfits, from rainbow tutus to Green-Man-inspired bodysuits to banana costumes. Anything neon or glowing was the norm. The clientele bore a refreshing lack of pretension—there were the usual groups of friendly festie folks, crunchy kids, electro nuts, clubbers, ravers, rollers, and even a ferociously fist-pumping but otherwise harmless faction of guidos, but everyone seemed strangely at peace with each other. Such is the magic of truly successful festivals, which Ultra certainly embodied, despite the lack of onsite camping. I used to think that only living together as a temporary community could establish the kind of widespread camaraderie I found at festivals like Bonnaroo and Echo Project, but Ultra proved me wrong. Sure we all went home to our respective homes, hotels, motels, couches or cars at the end of the day, but while we were there, it was all about the music and the sense of social cohesion it brings. No matter who we might’ve been individually, together we were all the kind of people who’d actually pay to subject ourselves to a 2-day marathon of nonstop bass lines and booty shaking, and there’s definitely a sense of solidarity in that. Here’s my attempt at sharing that solidarity with you: a play-by-play account of my Ultra 2010 Experience.
FRIDAY:
Due to the combined forces of rush hour gridlock, a long wait at the press tent, an inexplicably early set time, and the potentially ill-advised decision to run all the way back up ten flights of hotel stairs to retrieve my collection of glowsticks, I tragically and shamefully missed the show I was most looking forward to: Pretty Lights. As such, my Ultra arrival was slightly marred by frustration, but as I crossed into Bicentennial’s electronic wonderland of sound, I was able to recover pretty quickly and start focusing on what was yet to come. Entering to the right of the main stage, my friend and I were immediately enveloped in Passion Pit’s giddy crowd-pleaser “Better Things,” but determined to check out the scene, we managed to tear ourselves away from Michael Angelakos’ dizzying falsetto to take a look around.
Directly in front of the rather sparsely populated main stage, the Ibiza Arena was already packed to the brim with punctual festivalgoers pumping along to the pulsations of DJ Laidback Luke. It was overwhelming at first. We dithered from one stage to the other, trying to assemble our troops (already scattered throughout the festival due to the separate entrances for general admission, will call, and press) and unsure of where or how to start our musical voyage before finally plunging into the Ibiza tent as Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.i.am took the stage.
Let me be clear: I despise the Black Eyed Peas. Just looking at Fergie makes me want to punch a baby in the face. However, due to the welcome exclusion of Peas abominations like “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” Will.i.am’s set quickly developed into a high-energy albeit rather typical affair of samples and remixes, including a “Don’t Stop Believing”/“Sweet Child O’ Mine”/“Thriller” sequence that got the crowd riled up enough to start climbing the suspension poles. Pole-climbing became a common occurrence throughout the festival, and as each daring idiot clambered up and beamed down at the crowd as though he were the first person in history to reach such clever heights, I was actually reminded of how much I appreciate the lasseiz-faire nature of these types of events. At Ultra, you don’t get punished for doing something stupid like climbing up a pole. If you fall, it’s your own damn fault. The same goes for drugs; yes, drug-culture thrives at Ultra, but it’s by no means unavoidable or even all that perceptible for those who aren’t interested in it. Ultimately the choice of whether or not to take part is completely up to the individual—at Ultra, and other events like it, you can do and be whatever and whoever and however you want to be amidst a community virtually void of judgment. It carves out a unique time and place of jubilant anarchy, where the typical and often arbitrary rules and taboos of society go out the window, and the crazy kids get to come out and play without fear, rediscovering a rare sense of human continuity all but lost in the tightly controlled system we live in today.
Anyway, my friends and I ducked out of Will.i.am’s set early to grab some soggy/overpriced festival food and then headed over to London dance duo Groove Armada’s scheduled live performance on the Main Stage. But wait, this isn’t… who is this? It was LMFAO, inexplicably coming on early and punishing our ears with a worse-than-usual rendition of “I’m In Miami Bitch” (this phrase became a kind of all-too-obvious theme for the festival, sampled in several other sets and plastered in Day-Glo on what appears to be this year’s most popular tourist t-shirt). The performance carried on exactly as you might expect from the people responsible for the Jersey Shore theme song as well as every other miserably catchy vocal hook on the frat party circuit these days (personal favorite: “SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS! SHA-SHA-SHA-SHOTS!”).
When they finally emerged, electro-pop outfit Groove Armada provided a welcome reprieve from the off-key assclownery and a healthy dose of estrogen amidst all the male energy dominating Ultra’s stages. While Tom Findlay and Andy Cato have been grooving since the mid-90s, their most recent album, this year’s
Black Light, debuted fearless female vocalist Saintsaviour, who carried the performance, marching onto the stage in a suit of sparkly armor and rocking out like some kind of alien empress.
We left Armada heading vaguely in the direction of Infected Mushroom, until I suddenly heard some seriously sick beats coming from the direction of what would soon prove to be my favorite area of the festival—the comparatively small but ideally situated Biscayne Stage, stationed in the very corner of the park and framed by a cluster of skyscrapers and what appeared to be Miami’s mini monorail track. Plunging into the smallish crowd gathered in front of the stage, we were immediately sucked into the spellbinding throb of a DJ none of us had ever heard of before—Fake Blood aka DJ Touché. Remixing samples from Little Boots’ “Stuck on Repeat” and The Kills’ “Cheap and Cheerful,” along with original tracks such as “I Think I Like It,” Fake Blood expertly blended fidgety synth stabs and pitched-up vocal bits built to the brink of torment before surrendering to pounding baselines that got the whole crowd jumping. It turned out to be one of my favorite sets of the weekend.
Due to the utter overabundance of Ultra’s lineup (given the chance I’d see every single act individually, but that would take months), we’d typically stick around for a few songs of each set and then look at our tattered pamphlets and sprint over to the next stage to check out a new scene. We spent the 9:00-10:00 slot flip-flopping between two masters of house music: David Guetta and Kaskade. French DJ Guetta is a perennial favorite of the club scene with boatloads of mainstream appeal, probably due to collaborations with radio rappers Kid Cudi, Akon, and Will.i.am (the latter, not unexpectedly, stuck around for a guest appearance on Guetta’s stage). Guetta put on a show that revolved just as much if not more around visual spectacle as it did around music: the first in a series of late-night Main Stage headliners featuring mind-blowing collaborations of colored lights, long-range lasers, multi-screen visuals, and massive flame-throwers that sent waves of heat all the way to the very back of the crowd. Kaskade, on the other hand, while certainly not lacking in the lights and lasers department, spun out dreamy pulsations that could’ve retained their allure in a cement prison cell.
After working up a sweat in Kaskade’s tent, my crew and I decided to settle down for a welcome period of relaxed listening on a grassy hill next to one of the majestic white Heineken domes in the center of the park. From there we watched as the masses gathered around Main Stage for the highly anticipated Tiësto set that would close out the evening. While just as danceable as that of Guetta or Kaskade, Netherlands-born DJ Tiësto’s music is rooted in trance, and despite the progressive nature of his eclectic samplings and collaborations, his mesmerizing ability to put audiences into a mobile yet trance-like state is worth mentioning. Tiësto’s set got better as it went on, and eventually had us off the grass and into the fray, dancing wildly to the symphonic percolations of “Adagio For Strings” and the chill-inducing splendor of tranced-out Tegan and Sara collaboration “Feel It In My Bones.” The two guys gallivanting around the stage in stilts and full-body light-up suits with guns that emitted billowing clouds of fog just added to the surrealism of the whole affair.
SATURDAY:
Day 2 began at noon, another sunny portrait of meteorological perfection. We arrived at Bicentennial to find a sold-out venue—apparently the 100,000-person capacity had actually been reached. Scalpers were selling Saturday-only tickets for up to $400 (originally a 2-day pass cost only $140). Planning ahead never felt so good.
Our first stop of the day was Diplo at the Bayfront Live Stage. One half of Major Lazer, which had a separate set later in the day, Diplo aka Wesley Pentz is clearly a man who knows his craft. Dressed in a Major Lazer t-shirt, the unflappable Pentz mixed and mashed a variety of different samples and syncopations, including the absurdly infectious hook from Lazer’s “Pon de Floor,” while infusing it all with his characteristically bouncy Floridian vibes.
Post-Diplo, in the process of mobilizing for the Damian Marley/Nas set over at Main Stage, I was suddenly struck motionless as the opening vocals of a very special song came blaring over DJ Steve Aoki’s speakers: it was “Circle of Life,” as in that marvelous opening song from The Lion King where Rafiki holds baby Simba up in the sky at the tip of Pride Rock and all the lions cheer (I was thus inspired to look up the lyrics—apparently they are “Nants ingonyama bagithi baba, sithi uhhmm ingonyama” which means “There comes a lion, oh yes, it’s a lion.” You learn something new every day). The Circle continued with a charming remix stratified with jungle beats that had the crowd going wild, but my troops were on a Marley mission, so I had to bid farewell just as the Kid Millionaire was launching into a spontaneous head-banging dance and screaming in a sinister way over what must have been a pre-mixed track. Ah well, a good time to move on.
At the Marley/Nas show, I was most delighted to find that the unrelenting flag-waver I remembered from Damian’s concert circa 2007 was still waving in full force. If you’ve ever seen a Damian Marley performance, you know what I’m talking about, and if not, you should, because it is awesome. Marley’s affable mix of Jamaican charm and scintillating rhymes effortlessly arranged over reggae/hip-hop harmonies is the perfect soundtrack for a sunny day in Miami. Nas’ hard-hitting urban eloquence adds another pleasing layer to the Marley marvel—the comrades’ musical and cultural solidarity shined brightly throughout their performance, inciting further anticipation for their long-awaited collaborative album
Distant Relatives, due for release later this month.
The next stop of our meandering musical journey was the tiny Day-Glo Arena, which advertised the world’s largest paint party. Clearly, I needed to get involved. We spent the next half hour dancing madly to the house beats of various smaller-name DJs as armed performers in plasticine suits sprayed us with neon paint. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Once we were thoroughly doused in Day-Glo, we headed back over to the main stage to check out neo-electro dance DJ Benny Benassi, where it was easy to see why Benassi is such a sensation. The epileptic revelry of throbbing beats and screeching synthesizers—particularly in hit single “Satisfaction,” with its “Fitter Happier”-inspired computer voiceovers—really epitomized Ultra’s overall atmosphere.
I spent the next few hours over at my beloved Biscayne stage, where a series of back-to-back dubstep sets was already in full-force. A London-based offshoot of U.K. garage that employs elements of drum'n'bass, techno, and dub, dubstep has a kind of dark but thrilling intensity that really cuts to the heart of EDM greatness. The line-up progressed from Benga to Caspa to Glitch Mob to Skream! to Rusko, and while I tended to drift in and out of these performances, there was something special about the cohesion of the crowds that gathered for these sets. From the hill next to the stage, I had a perfect view of all the tightly packed bodies jumping in unison with their hands in the air as the Miami sun began to set, flooding the sky with rose gold.
Next on the Main Stage was progressive trance DJ Armin Van Buuren, another Netherlands native with worldwide acclaim whose sprawling compositions and breathtaking lightshow seamlessly carried the frenzied masses from day to night. Van Buuren and Tiësto share a number of similarities, and collaborated in the past with the hit “Eternity.”
Soon it was back to Biscayne for more back-to-back goodness. First up, Bassnectar, self-described as “A free-form project that merges music, art, new media, social involvement, and community values; dedicated to a constantly evolving ethos of collaborative creation, self reinvention, and boundary-pushing experimentation." That statement may contain some bullshit, but with his trademark waist-length dreads and exuberant head bobbing, Bassnectar is a force to be reckoned with and a personal favorite of mine. His quirky mix of tripped-out ambience and hard-rocking techno beats stands out even in this sea of other talented electronic music-makers.
Ultra’s quick turnaround between artists was both consistent and admirable. Accordingly, as soon as Bassnectar shuffled off the stage, a bunch of new people jumped on. This motley crew of costumed dancers came to start the all-out dance party featured on Major Lazer’s set. This newly established digital reggae/dancehall project has received much critical acclaim and indie cred since the Summer 2009 release of Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do. The innovation of DJs Diplo and Switch, Major Lazer features Gorillaz-esque cartoon characters complete with an absurd back-story (something involving limbs lost in the secret Zombie War of 1984), and mixes a range of Jamaican musical elements with tight beats, catchy refrains, and a slew of guest vocalists, from Santigold to Mr. Lexxx. Their set was a paradigm of pure fun, with vocalist Skerrit Bwoy and a troop of female dancers infusing an extra layer of personality. Oh, and the snappy hook featured in “Pon de Floor” is still stuck in my head.
Finally, yet all too soon, we entered Ultra’s final hour: Deadmau5, Paul Oakenfold, Ghostland Observatory, and Carl Cox were all performing at the same time on different stages. Tough decisions had to be made. I started out with Deadmau5 on Main Stage, where the entire area was so packed that oxygen seemed like a luxury. So, I took the lack of oxygen and the Mau5’s underwhelming intro as an excuse to round out my trifecta of Ghostland Observatory experiences and headed over to the far more breathable Bayfront Live Stage at the other end of the park.
Ghostland did not disappoint. While their set seemed suspiciously brief (no sign of “Silver City,” a personal favorite), roguish frontman Aaron Behrens lived up to his Freddy Mercury/Prince associations as he shrieked and gyrated amidst the smoky technicolor of a laser light show spectacular enough to rival those featured on much larger and infinitely more populated stages. The layered perfection of thumping bass, crunchy guitar riffs, and silky synth hooks featured in “Midnight Voyage” extended into a full-on electro-jam session, held down by producer/drummer/synther Thomas Turner in his requisite floor-length cape ensemble. Ghostland’s vivacious performance was a perfect amalgamation of all the various subgenres that Ultra promotes, and a preview of the places EDM can and will go as it continues to develop. In other words, a perfect way to end an incredible weekend.
Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan
