Winter Music Conference 2008

Photo credit: Richard Patterson for the NY Times

I’ve been quiet here for the past week, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been listening to music. In fact, I’ve been listening to a lot of it. At pounding volumes. In sweaty clubs. Yep, last week I was at the Winter Music Conference in Miami.

While the rest of the gang here at eMusic seems to get excited to go down in Austin each year to SXSW in March, I opted for the dance music equivalent in 2008. (Big surprise there.) But while there are big differences in the types of music played throughout, there are also a lot of similarities.

-Your pale complexion will be compromised by day parties.
-You will not sleep.
-You will leave a party that you like in search of a party that you’ve heard is “going off” elsewhere and regret doing so at least once.

To the music!

BEST LIVE SET: Cobblestone Jazz
I saw Cobblestone Jazz recently in New York (and did an upcoming interview for eMusic with them) and was blown away by their live show. I had always thought that the live show was the point of the group—the full-length 23 Seconds seems to lack something at times—and I wasn’t disappointed. The show I saw in Miami, though, was even better. While in New York there were moments that the group accidentally slid briefly into smooth jazz territory, Cobblestone kept the pressure up for their hour-long set of pumping, improvisatory techno-jazz. One eMusic user has pointed toward Orbital as a reference point and I definitely agree. If you get a chance to see them live, do not hesitate. For the best taste of their live show, check out the Dump Truck EP.

BEST DJ SET (TIE): Ame / Dixon / Marcus Worgull
My favorite mix of last year was Get Physical’s Body Language 4 by Dixon (eMusic doesn’t have this, unfortunately), so I was really excited to see him DJ on the last day that I would be at the conference. I had to catch a plane, so I only got to see about two hours, but it might have been the best two hours of the entire week that I saw. Dixon switched off with one of the guys from Ame and Marcus Worgull (a rising talent!) and they played a slow-burning selection of tracks that mixed perfectly into one another. One of the things that I always look out for in a DJ set is how well it’s mixed and these guys were all interested in lengthy, mesmerizing blends. Pure bliss. Not much here from each, so I would check into the recent Henrik Schwarz Live album, which has the same feel as the set they played.

BEST DJ SET (TIE): Claude Von Stroke
Before you ask, no, it wasn’t at the P. Diddy party.* Instead, I woke up after three hours of sleep to go to the Dirtybird Afterhours Party at Studio A and was met by a bunch of people dancing in the middle of the mostly-empty club that clearly hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Claude was playing hit after hit that I had heard, but couldn’t quite place. (I was groggy in a different way, give me a break.) The sound was punishing—Studio A needs to turn it down just a little bit, to be honest—but it was simultaneously surreal and awesome to wake up at 10 AM and begin dancing a half-hour later. Download the excellent first half of Von Stroke’s Beware of the Bird for some of his best original productions.

*(Although I did hear from a friend that was there that they’ve never laughed harder in a club than when Diddy came on stage with three bodyguards, a raver whistle and started to tell the crowd that this was “something they’d never seen before.” Indeed.)

Other highlights: Seth Troxler’s short shorts at the Spectral boat party (do yourself a favor and google this in a few days when the pictures inevitably emerge), Roland Appel’s low-key set at the Demon Days party, Simon Baker provoking breakdancing at the conference’s first party.