Airdrop Records, Agency & Blog

It has been made official, New York City will no longer be a dry desert for electronic music and to be honest, lately it has been a jungle. Several people have really watered up the NYC nightscape bringing in top talent and continually fostering local talent. Special thanks to minimoo, Blk Marketmembership, Bunker, Biatch Corp, LESS, Bar 13 and reSolute you have all participated in reviving NY. Last night was a very special evening for NYC electronic music, it was the official announcement of Minitek Festival, a 3 day event to take place on September 12th, 13th and 14th. For this special evening, minimoo united some of the leading artists of the NYC scene and it despite not having Matthew Dear, Paco Osuna or other more internationally renown name, I am not alone in saying that it was by far one of the best minimoos ever! Naudio, Alka Rex, Taimur, Memek and Elon all took turns destroying the dancefloor to pieces. Memek played Minimaril’s Too Young to be Famous and it was huge! Check out the video (we have more videos on airdroptv):

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As for the festival, just enough information has been given to keep our mouths watering and dancing for more. A few of the headliners are Richie Hawtin, Magda, Paco Osuna, Seph (live), Guy Gerber (live), Marco Carolla, Camea, Pan Pot, and more! for all announced headliners watch the video! The venue is not yet announced, but will be treated like an official festival, who knows beatport may even have a stage!

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Anyone who has once been to Miami during the Winter Music Conference knows the feeling of contentment, tension but also emptiness when stepping in the shuttle that links South Beach to MIA Airport. Contentment for having heard the best music in the world (non-stop), in such a short lapse of time and in the most cinematic city of the world, (that normally doesn’t receive such musical quality the rest of the year). Tension because you obviously arrived late for the shuttle since you stayed too long at the Sunday School for Degenerates and the people waiting are mad at you. Emptiness because you simply had such a BLAST that you can’t really feel anything, anymore…

Our week started on Tuesday with the Wave Music Party at Pawn Shop and Tedd Patterson opening our 6-days marathon with beautiful deepness and followed closely by François K (one of our favourites) and an unusual set (for the U.S) with a certain Techno dimension to it… Beautiful! As soon as François finished his bomb-dropping we ran to the back room to catch the last half-hour of Cobblestone Jazz Live! The trio composed by Mathew Johnson, Danuel Tate and Tyger Dhula kept the whole room in a rare intensity before finishing their set with the voices of my favourite track of theirs: ‘W’. Speechless…In the main room Radioslave took over François for some super-efficient stripped-down Techno, while DJ Three started rumbling the whole place with the backroom’s speaker-wall. All of Tuesday’s wonderful artists were super happy to receive a little yellow Giraffe and an Extraction Compilation. However we had to keep a little bit of energy for a special day…

… Wednesday started with the Freak’n'Chic (Dan Ghenacia and David Duriez’s Label) party: Jamie Jones, followed by Shonky and Marc Antona! What a line-up for this afternoon party. And what a venue: the Red Terrace of the Townhouse Hotel. Jamie Jones has a unique style, his beats really trigger something special in the people’s minds and feet. It’s simple, essential, super power and chic! Jamie really liked “Missing Keyframes”, Fase Miusic Sender’s track that is featured on our Extraction Compilation so he closed his set with it! Having the place melt under the mid-afternoon sun and handing down the commands to Shonky. Needless to say, AirDrop celebrated this properly, and had a hard-time making it to the OVUM vs. Pokerflat party at The Vagabond. The venue is great with such a big and tropical garden and two rooms.

Then we headed to Studio A, three blocks down for the absolute killing of Switch (closing the Downtown Riot party) and Justin Martin taking over for the Dirtybird afterhours. Switch is something apart and we all know it already, but having Justin follow up made it even more interesting. Justin is crazy, we all know that too, we had already heard him when he played for Soul Clap’s 3rd Edition of their Dancing on the Charles 2007 Party in Boston last summer but his style at Studio A was something else. No Comment…

Thursday, we needed to chill, and the Giant Step/ Demon Days party at the Delano’s pool was all the most welcome. With Roland Appel playing nice and relaxed, followed by Carl Craig and his profound slow techno synths. I saw him a few hours earlier at a panel, and Carl is so above everything that he didn’t even have to say a word during the whole panel, the other panelists kept on talking, but Carl is wisdom, and wisdom is silence. At the Delano, we had the time to congratulate Justin Martin for his set the night before, give our Giraffe to Claude von Stroke and Carl Craig and even cross paths with Harley and Muscle! After this a big mistake was made, the mistake however lead to a great thing. But we thought Crosstown Rebels Afterhours was the Friday morning when it really was the Saturday. So we went to rest to be fresh for that. Although, as I told you, it did lead to a good thing:

FRIDAY AT PS 14: CHEAP SUNGLASSES. In our view, it was the best party this year. We spent a beautiful day in the garden of PS14, playing hide and seek with the dancefloor, the boiling sun and the refreshing clouds; warming up to the beats of Tamur and the BLK/MRKT boys and going absolutely nuts to Italoboyz outside and Derek Plasaiko inside (who played for us in Boston two weeks ago, get the set at the link). Then, something good/ bad happened again: We had to leave PS14 in the middle of the afternoon: BAD; but it was to get to the interview Beatport organized for us at their National Hotel Headquarter: AMAZING. Check it out here. When this was over, Princess Anja Schneider just finished playing next to the interview booth and it was her turn to get interviewed, but it was also time for us to go back to PS14! And guess who closed the garden? Another Princess… Magda.

Saturday we decided to go back to Townhouse for Anja’s Mobilee Party organized by Listed, the Chicago/S.F boys. But before that: we also went back to the National Hotel/ Beatport Headquarter, which wasn’t on the program, but when we heard of the Ryan Elliott/ Matthew Dear/ Guy Gerber/ Richie Hawtin bonanza, we decided we couldn’t really miss that, could we? Richie was ending at 5:30PM, exactly when Pan-Pot was starting at the Townhouse, 4 blocks away. There definetely is a higher force ruling WMC. After Pan-Pot was Sebo-K and Anja Schneider for the finish-him. All I can remember is that it was great Right after that was Minimoo with a very special line-up and in a very special place, a hangar on North 24th Str. in Continental Miami! Minimoo have been gracing NYC with one of the finest quality party over the last few years. And once again in MIA they did their thing right, with a dope spot, a deafningly powerful sound-system and line up.

Sunday… School of Degenerates.

Overall, the SAMC was quite an experience being in a massive hangar like space with 10,000-20,000 (I could not tell the difference), they were all going crazy for the terrible trancey-progressive music of Anthony Pappa. Though it was not my favorite music, there were a few good moments and sets defying a narrow minded conception of what is to be techno and electronic music. In particular the brazilian tornado Mary Zander (1st video below), who made me think a lot about Damian Lazarus‘ djing, then there also was the sick sick back to back between Franco Cinelli and Nico Purman where they dropped some classic stuff from ‘97 – ‘99 so dope. We missed Seph’s live-set because the organizers put him on before anyone was there! Guy Gerber was scheduled and finally didn’t make it to the event, he was replaced by Sharam Jey. And Matthew Dear (2nd video below) was there, very fine but not too groovy.

In a nutshell, many disappointments for an event that claims to be a conference. There weren’t any collaborations between the main production company and outside events, quite on the contrary many of the potential projects were jeopardized by evil forces. Even the promotion of the day events and the “official” parties happening during the week was terrible. It was just a shame to see such big budget mishandled.

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