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Miami’s Musical Catwalk

As DJs, producers and labels all get their biggest musical bombs ready for Miami’s annual musical showcase, DJMag looks back at the history of Big Miami Tunes breaking at WMC

Is it the dance music equivalent of the Holy Grail or a merely an empty, outdated myth? That’s the question hanging over the concept of The Big Miami tune — the idea that one track can come out of nowhere to take conference week by storm and springboard to global dancefloor domination in the process.

Where did it all start? Well, Spiller’s ‘Groovejet’ definitely has much to answer for. The runaway success story of WMC 2000, the disco-licked instrumental house track was laid down by a pretty much unknown Italian producer but went on to become a bonafide Ibiza anthem — even topping global pop charts with the help of a commercially savvy vocal edit.

For both aspiring producers and major record labels, it spelt a clear message — dance music was big business with Miami’s WMC representing the ultimate showroom of its potential wares.

Before the days of MP3s and filesharing network, WMC represented an essential, throbbing access point to tomorrow’s anthems for DJs and A&Rs alike.

“When the conference itself was a bit smaller and compact, there was definitely a real chance for one record to break through and become that big Miami tune or the record of Miami,” remembers Positiva’s Jason Ellis, who famously signed Spiller’s ‘Groovejet’ just before that year’s WMC.

Of course, it was all so different back then. Across the late-’90s and early-noughties, industry hype surrounding Miami’s WMC was as pumped as the biceps and boobs the city is famous for. And in the days before MP3s, when word of a killer track got out it spread like wildfire across the city with any copy in existence becoming gold dust.

“I remember having a copy of the Prince Quick bootleg of Robert Owens’ ‘I’ll Be Your Friend’ in the late-‘90s,” recalls Steve Lawler. “The only people that had it at conference were myself, Tenaglia and, of course, Prince Quick, but there were so many DJs offering me hard cash to buy it off me. Some people even offered me money just to borrow it for a gig. Sheer madness and all over one record.”

Such stories were rife at the time, but the game has changed. In dance music’s digital age acetates have suffered the same fate as the VHS cassette and flexi disc — obsolete relics of a bygone era. As Pete Tong reminds us, even if people are sitting side-by-side at the pool of the Delano they’ll still be zapping tracks to each other over the web rather than handing each other expensively pressed acetates or even cheap, freshly burnt CDs. The need for A&Rs to spend thousands getting over to Miami to collect physical promos and gauge real-time reactions has all but died.

At the same time, ascendant European gatherings such as ADE and Tong’s own IMS in Ibiza have arguably shifted some of the industry focus away from WMC week.

But with a bigger influx of cross-genre parties than ever, the demand to write tracks to soundtrack them remains bigger than ever.

“There’s still two times every year when producers make sure they’ve got their tracks ready for — one is the start of the Ibiza season and the other is definitely Miami,” says Pete Tong. “Just like every year, the volume of new music coming into my inbox has absolutely through the roof in the last few weeks.”

In that sense, Miami’s essential thirst for timeless, instantly spine-tingling anthems remains. The sheer, unrelenting volume of parties and different genres represented across WMC might make it impossible for one single track to dominate the conference in the same way Spiller’s ‘Groovejet’ or Shapeshifter’s ‘Lola’s Theme’ once did, but it remains both an unparalleled springboard for the biggest tracks of the year.

At last year’s more underground parties, you couldn’t escape the haunting chimes and sleazy disco mutant grooves of Jamie Jones’s prophetically titled ‘Summertime’, while Michel Cleis’s pan-flute Amazonian house gem ‘Le Mezcla’ was played by everyone from Louie Vega to Luciano last year. Is it just coincidence that both tracks powered on to take the Ibiza seasons by storm?

“The industry have always felt that Miami is like a precursor to Ibiza and I think that’s still true,” believes Defected boss Simon Dunmore, who signed ‘Le Mezcla’ for Strictly Rhythm in the WMC aftermath.

“People are playing their biggest records and the tone is set for the whole summer at Miami. You have agents, promoters, DJs, clubbers and journalists all in one place, which is pretty unique. It’s a bit like a fashion house display for the forthcoming season with labels showing off what they’ll be rolling over the next six months. It might sound a bit Alan Partridge, but Miami is a musical catwalk in that way.”

One strong advocate of using that musical catwalk to its fullest advantage is Toolroom boss Mark Knight. Specifically tailoring Toolroom’s release schedule to unleash some of their biggest bombs during Miami WMC, Knight believes it’s as important as ever before — even highlighting that the internet era has opened up new ways of promoting at the conference.

“For a lot of people, the whole ethos of breaking records in Miami has been forgotten about in favour of the parties but for us it’s very, very important,” he explains.

“Ok so you don’t have A&R men running around dishing out fat cheques, but it’s still a great medium and platform to do it. It gets loads of press attention, the parties are great testing grounds and the fact that it’s so close to the summer means it’s the perfect place to launch a record. With so many parties being recorded and even broadcast over the web, you can launch an instant viral campaign off the back of it and away you go. ”

Sourse: www.djmag.com