Its a running joke among some of the mixshow DJs that they all want to see my schedule. They look at the photos and wonder where I was. Looking back on Thursday, I realize that my goal schedule was INSANE and its no wonder that I am emotionally, mentally and physically drained after a week in Miami.
Think about it - what kind of sicko would schedule 5 interviews in a two hour span. Luckily two cancelled - so three interviews were a lot more manageable. First up was new vocalist Christian George - whose debut single "Strangers" is already making noise in the clubs due to remixes by Thomas Gold and the Wideboys. I was quite impressed by how knowlegable he was about the dance music and culture - even knowing the term "bassline" to describe the Wideboys mix. Maybe its his modeling and dancing experienced that taught him that he had to master his craft.
The gorgeous Jamie Jo was next. Chatting with her poolside in a beautiful cabana really was a perfect balance of work and pleasure. She is the kind of artist that will excite you more with every song that you hear. Combining electro with a pop sensibility, Jamie's debut artist album is set for a June release
Lucky number three was proghouse producer Matthew Dekay. The dutchman is quite busy with a new partnership working as an engineer for Sander Kleinenberg as well as Drowsy 2 and a new label. All of this along with his work on Armada and other productions - it sounds like Matthew will have a lot of great music in the works.
We all love "schwag" aka the free promotional stuff you get - tshirts, cds, bags, etc. Well, inspired by the giftbags given to stars during big events - music events often have "gifting suites" where the artists tour through and get gifted with whatever products they was. I was incredibly excited to be invited to the BPM/Overamerica gifting suite where I saw luminaries like Larry Tee and Steve Aoki taking part in the festivities. My favorite scores -- a hot pair of burgundy leather Creative Recreation shoes, a fly pair Globe board shorts, a pair of blue-green 55 DSL (a sublabel of Diesel) jeans, a sherbert and aqua colored pair of Boosted headphones, a brown New Era wool hat and a cool printed t-shirt from Zoo York. My "shopping" bag was full so I rushed back home to drop it off.
Next up was Remix Hotel. This year has got to be the biggest its ever been. A line out of the parking lot showed that the rumors speculating an increase from 1500 to 5000 registrations might be true. I checked out the new Pacemaker from Tonium which is a handheld DJ system. This little pocket size device is the cool toy that everyone will want for Christmas because it allows to beatmix two different mp3s off of the internal hard drive storage.
Stanton showed off the new SC system - a mix controller and deck control two interface with DJ software. The mixers has 4 lines and can be customized to be four separate audio lines or two lines with two effect control slide or however you want (its all midi assignable.) The deck control feels and reacts like a turntable with various knobs and buttons to trigger effects. Its a really solid system that we can't get our hands on to play with.