Urban Marinade

As we continue to look back at Miami Music Week, we move to Thursday. It was at this point you could really sense the energy in South Beach building. Of course there were a ton of people in town on Wednesday. But it was almost like a switch was flipped Thursday morning. Suddenly every single hotel, every restaurant, every damn cab, had dance music blaring from the speakers. The streets were clearly littered with dance music fans and the party hopping had officially begun. If you had any doubts about the split between WMC and Ultra, those doubts were now being laid to rest. Miami Music Week was clearly the center of the dance music world.

We started our Thursday off by photographing Sander Van Doorn’s DJ set at the Belve Music Lounge at the W Hotel South Beach for his publicist, Sara Cooper. We knew it was a private party and would probably be fun. What we didn’t know was that literally every big name in dance music would be coming by for a visit. Oh, and all the drinks and food were on the house. What???????

Okay, so this is the point where we came in, did our job of capturing some great photos of Sander and had planned to head over to the Beatport Beach Party next door. But here I am, camera in one hand, drink in the other, having a conversation with Funkagenda.



Fedde Le Grand had just wrapped up an interview with Sirius/XM and Carl Cox was hanging with Sara. I look at Rob and ask…”why are we gonna leave?” So we didn’t. We spent the next 4 hours - check that, maybe 5, maybe 6 - hanging out at one of the coolest Miami Music Week parties you could ever wish for. MTV was conducting interviews on the roof of the condo being used for the party. We had food, drinks and even some Cuban coffee to keep us awake. It was pure dance music splendor by the beach.  The day continued with Skrillex, Roger Sanchez, Adrian Lux and Drop the Lime on the decks. As the sun started to set, we decided it was time to get some dinner and prep for our night with Made Events and Above & Beyond. Off we went… but there was more…