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For the dance music industry the Miami WMC marks the start of the dance music year. Tracks and new artists are introduced to the industry and punters alike over this week long event that has expanded in recent years to encompass many spin off parties, receptions, private villa bashes and parallel events. Recent years has seen the timing of the WMC coincide with the US’s Spring Break week – combined you can only begin to imagine the debauchery after a few Mohitos in the sun by the pool! Getting back to the topic at hand tracks are picked up here, played back in the UK and other underground clubs and then pushed/caned in Ibiza as/on white labels/cdrs. From here they are picked up and signed by more major labels and several months and an dance music events later (ADE, etc) start cutting across into the main stream. Phew! So what were the big standout tunes (if any?) this year? Watch this space as I hit up a few of the artists that were out there for their thoughts in the coming weeks.

 Every year as part of the WMC the Internatioanl Dance Music Awards (IDMAs) also are staged mid week by the pool of the resort hosting the conference. The full winners list can be found here at the WMC IDMA site but I will list a few highlights below:

Best Underground Dance Track – went to Home – Above & Beyond – Ultra Records – beating the other stiff competition of
Heater – Samim – Ministry of Sound, Anthem – Filo & Peri ft. Eric Lumiere – Ultra Records
Riff – Sander van Doorn – Ultra Records, Rise Up – Michael Procter – Mychan Records, and
Feels Like Home – Meck ft Dino – Yoshitoshi

Best House/Garage Track & Best Breaks/Electro Track – Love Is Gone – David Guetta and Chris Willis – Ultra Records

Best Progressive House/Trance Track – Let Go – Paul van Dyk – Mute

Best European DJ – Armin van Buuren beating Paul van Dyk, Tiesto, David Guetta, Ferry Corsten, Sander Kleinenberg

Best American DJ -  Gabriel & Dresden – beating the likes of Markus Schulz, Roger Sanchez, Christopher Lawrence, Danny Tenaglia and Deep Dish.

Best Global DJ   – Tiesto – beating Paul van Dyk, Armin van Buuren, Above and Beyond, Gabriel & Dresden, Carl Cox and Ferry Corsten.

Tiesto also won Best Full Length DJ Mix CD for In Search of Sunrise Vol. 6 – Tiesto – Nettwerk Records beating some tough competition with the likes of�
 A State of Trance 2007 – Armin van Buuren – Ultra Records, Anjunabeats Volume 5 – Above & Beyond – Ultra Records, In Between – Paul van Dyk – Mute and Mass Movement – Joe Bermudez – Nervous Records

Best Producer – Timbaland

Best Remixer – Robbie Rivera

Best Break-Through Artist (solo) – Sander van Doorn

Best Break-Through Artist (group) – Justice

Best Dance Artist (solo) – Bob Sinclar

Best Dance Artist (group) -  Daft Punk

Best Dance Artist (group) – Daft Punk
 beating  Above & Beyond, Chemical Brothers, Filo & Peri, Gabriel & Dresden, Freemasons, The Killers

Best Global Dance Record Label – Ministry of Sound edging out again stiff competition from

Black Hole Recordings (Tiesto’s label), Global Underground, Armada (Armin Van Buuren’s label) and the one and only Defected.

Best Global Club -  Amnesia Ibiza !

Pioneer totally cleaned up once again firmly establishing itself as the leader in digital DJ hardware picking up Best Manufacturer of the Year, Best Headphones – Pioneer HDJ-1000 (I must try em!), Best Mixer – Pioneer DJM800 (I want one!), Best CD Player – Pioneer CDJ-1000MK3 (must upgrade my MkIIs!), Best New Product of the Year – Pioneer CDJ 400.
Ableton Live 7.0 – Best Audio Editing Software of the Year & Best Audio DJ Software of the Year

finally Lifetime Achievement Award  posthumously went to Mel Cheren who died late last year. I was fortunate to interview Mel late early in 2007 and will post the interview to this site at a future date.

As I said the above are some of the highlights that caught my eye – complete list is online.

Tags: Muse, Music, News, Tech by Nick
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Easter weekend saw the close of another of London’s clubbing institutions: Turnmills. I remember first going there religiously for The Gallery most Fridays back in ‘96 when i was first in London – hard to believe that was 12 years ago and even harder to believe they are closing after so many good nights!

The weeks leading up to and the final Easter weekend sported lineups to die for with acts spanning the last 20 years of clubbing. Mates went down to Saturday night with The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim – the former playing an amazing set as did resident Anil Chawla with a classic underground set that went down well with the emotional punters. I made it down for the Sunday Last Dance catching CJ Mackintosh’s set (first time I had heard that wicked Dimitri from Paris remix of “Music Sounds Better With You” – nice have to track that one down!), who was followed by Frankie Knuckles in his usual good form – dropping his trademark classics like his new rework of the “Whistle Song”, “Your Love” and more. Frankie played from 2am to 5am with Danny Rampling taking the reigns energetically from then till close – I hear that Danny carried on until 4pm – (un)fortunately my legs ran outta steam just after 8am and I left a still up for it crowd having it on the main dance floor amidst slideshows of Gurnmills signs, DJ faces from the past and of course the club’s trademark lighting and lasers. I walked out into the frosty morning glare one last time smiling at all the good times I’d had there over the past 12 years… 

To all the Turnmills crew – Danny, Stix, Tom on the door and all the others that made it such an experience thank you!

ps It’s not all doom and gloom as the nights will relocate to other locations around London – The Gallery Turnmills Friday night of trance and progressive house will be relocating to Ministry and Together and other nights will be moving to The Scala at Kings Cross… watch this space for more updates in the coming weeks..

Tags: Gig, Muse by Nick
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