Ultra Music Festival: Day 1

There's no denying that Ultra Music Festival is the Mecca of EDM. Every year, all of the world's greatest DJs all come to Miami to give those of us who make it down there one of the greatest weekends of our lives. This year, I'm lucky enough to be able to experience Ultra's sold out second weekend (it was expanded to two weekends this year due to an extremely high demand for tickets last year), so I thought I'd share my experiences with you all via a day-by-day breakdown.

Throughout the day, I took a bunch of DIY videos with my iPhone of all the DJs and live acts I saw. And while the videos are kind of shaky, the sound quality turned out to be really good so I thought I'd post them here to give you a better idea of what the performances were like.

R3hab

I didn't know all that much about R3hab before I saw him perform, and I wasn't really sure what to expect from him given that he's a younger and relatively new act. But in the end, I was pleasantly surprised by his high-energy, electro-house set. Here's a video of him playing what is, in my opinion, the anthem of the festival this year: "Cannonball" by Showtek & Justin Prime.

Martin Solveig

What I love most about Martin Solveig is that when he plays a DJ set is that he's not afraid to step outside his own pop-house genre. Today, he rocked the main stage playing crowd favorites like "The Night Out" and "Hello," but he also played an eclectic mix of dubstep, electro and an unexpected series of trap songs such as RL Grime's remix of "Satisfaction" and Gent and Jawns' remix of "Express Yourself."

Eric Prydz

Eric Prydz's sets are known to be amazing experiences that feature long build-ups with rewarding drops and climaxes. Also operating and making music under the aliases Pryda and Cirez D, Prydz had a sizable catalog of music to play for us. He really brought his A-game last night, mixing together his unique style of semi-minimalist house and completely exceeding my already high expectations.

I'll take this space as an interlude to share this gem from my Main Stage experience with you...

Sleigh Bells

I missed most of Sleigh Bells' set so that I could see the majority of Eric Prydz's performance on the main stage, but I got there just in time to see them play crowd favorites "Riot Rhythm" and "A/B Machines." And despite the somewhat smaller crowd they drew due to the fact that they're not DJs, Sleigh Bells managed to crank out mass amounts of energy in their guitar and bass fueled anthems that kept their audience engaged and dancing.

Boys Noize

Soon after Sleigh Bells ended their set on the Live Stage, the Ultra stage crew wheeled out a massive skull that was soon to become the DJ booth for German producer Boys Noize. He played an incredible set that lasted for nearly two hours and managed to make every second of it interesting and filled with his signature brand of hard electro. This was easily one of the best performances of the whole day.

The Bloody Beetroots (Live)

Closing out the night on the Live Stage, The Bloody Beetroots played a completely live set instead of their recently more customary DJ set. Words cannot describe how hard the Beetroots went last night. They give it absolutely everything they had, and the crowd got really into it. And with bangers like "Warp" and "Rocksteady" to deliver to an audience of devoted fans, The Beetroots definitely gave the most hyper-energetic performance of the night.

(Sorry that this video's especially shaky. The crowd was going nuts.)

So that's about it for day one! Until next time...