For those not already in the know, The Winter Music Conference is the weeklong dance music event, held every March since the mid-1980s in Miami. Yeah, there’s no end of simple arse in your face music lovers and 24 hour party people in attendance and no end of totty, but the event is really aimed at industry professionals, record label representatives, promoters or people just looking for a slice of the future action; people like Fatboy Slim, for instance. In fact if something goes down well in Miami during this week in March you can bet your bottom dollar than the following year’s top summer floor fillers up and down clubs the length of the globe, from Ibiza to Ipswich will have started their journey right here. This is where tracks get premiered; this is where cases get showed. As such, the event has major international draw, with around 30% of attendees coming from outside the US and many more flying to Miami from all around the US.
Most of the action, however, is centred around South Beach, home to Miami’s most famous clubs: Space, Crobar, Mansion, Glass and the Opium Garden. And this where ‘South Beach Sounds – Miami Music Week Vol.1’ comes in.
Available as both a DVD and a DualDisc, ‘South Beach Sounds’ provides a slinky little window upon the whole beautiful decadence of the event with a bundle of cameos pulled from a fairly neat range of DJs including Paul Van Dyk, Josh One, Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, Kerry Forsten, and Junkie XL, each offering their own slant on what Miami Music Week means to them.
Whilst the documentary itself is let down by a shiny, glitzy travel bent and a shamelessly misogynistic ‘Destination Bikini’ featurette exploring the city that never sleeps through the eyes of seven scantily clad females with enough saucy tit and bottom cleavage to cushion the next Apollo moon landing, the loved-up Surround Sound mixes of tracks by Alan Parsons and the feature-length animation accompanying Yellownote’s ‘She Get’s Me High’ are worth the price of admission alone.
With a fairly broad-ranging audio compilation showcasing material by Pete Tong, Murk, DJ Craze and Infusion, ‘South Beach Sounds – Miami Music Week Vol.1’ makes for a pleasing if not altogether comprehensive exploration of one of key events in the dance music calendar. It may have all the appeal of an industry ‘showreel’ at times, it may lack the commitment of one or two true ‘Tong’ essentials but what it lacks in authority, it more than makes up for in fun.
Fans of serious Electronica are unlikely to be sold on this release, but as a peep-show peek at the perks of the more mainstream dance industry, and the outrageous chauvinism of the genre itself, it’s really quite amusing.