[REPORT] Findings on the new soul of EDM

The following is a followup report to my previous post, “Intentions for prying into the new soul of EDM”.

A Bro Looked At Me: Ultra Miami Day 1

March 28 2025

After landing at Miami airport, I grabbed a Monster energy from the vending machine, took two sips, dropped it, spilled it, threw it away, and jumped into an Uber praying to God we’d catch Tiesto in time.

We coagulated with Julian and Spencer at the Artist Beach, where boats paraded the Miami Bay with LED screens blasting Kygo and Steve Aoki’s faces. We walked side stage, where Afrojack immediately dove into a melodic piano medley of “"Take Over Control” with “Give Me Everything”, then transitioning into a dirty Dutch VIP of “I’m in Miami Bitch”, before introducing his special guests David Guetta and Sia to perform Titanium for the first time altogether. I felt like a little kid again and was absolutely buzzing from my soul’s core the entire time. I caught the drop of Titanium on my Chinese iPhone 4, and figured that the festival could end now and it’d be okay.

We got drunker and did drugs at the Artist Beach. We heard Alesso and walked back to the main stage again.

Angelic textures and blondes with third eyes. Girls who didn’t really seem to care or know what was going on. I said to Lulu, “The chords in the drop feel like what God would have authored as “The Melody of Beauty””. I was perfectly content, jumping up and down on repeat. Not as much filth as Afrojack, but the maximum on Swedish bliss. I thought that this festival was perfect.

We walked over to the Live Stage to watch Pendulum, which was sadly underwhelming and solidified Lulu and my determination to phase out live instruments in shows. Their DNB that they’re known for wasn’t really helped by the drums, and THREE midi guitarists. I would have rathered seem them DJ in cool outfits and good lights. One song sounded like Carnival by Kanye.

We left Ultra and played billiards for a bit before heading to the Tchami b2b AC Slater afterparty. We had trouble getting in for some reason, and while waiting on the street, a Bro looked at me. He looked as if he’d been styled by Tan France, with his teal floral button down. He said I looked “swagged out”. His friend had Life of Pablo merch on. They looked to Lulu and reiterated, “Your sister? Wow. So swagged out.” I stared forward. It didn’t feel flirty, but rather that awkward interaction where a person who realizes your trans wants to show you that they support you EXTRA by using gender affirming words over and over and over. “Your sister, the GIRL who stands before me? Is swagged out, FEMININE STYLE.”

When we were inside, we couldn’t make it to the bottle service like we had expected, so we chilled in GA as the two DJs b2bed. As I looked around, I wondered, “Do these people know, or care, who Tchami or AC Slater is? Do I care? Is it cooler to care or to not care?” As well as: “Why are you here?” Why am I feeling ashamed for judging them for spending so much on mid dance music? Are they the real enjoyers? Is this what being a hater is like?”

The thought I didn’t dare have: “Has it always been like this?”

The set edged on deep house and the crowd was profoundly boring and straight. What frustrates me the most about bass house that leans deep house is its teasing of Sonic Content without ever fully delivering it. A lot of AC Slater songs give you a taste of interesting rhythmic FM sub moment, before just going back into swung hats and unintelligible sub bass grooves. It feels like the tracks desperately wish to be flamboyant, to scream something, to be unapologetic, yet they reverse themselves and go back to hiding into their Deep House shell.

This is best summed out by the AC Slater track, “Crave the Bassline”. I actually have this on my USB and have DJed it a couple times. When it dropped, I was disappointed to find that my tastes had changed since I DJed it and I actually hated it now. The vocals say “crave the bassline” over and over, replicating the emotion (or lack thereof) while listening. As described above, it tease a wonderful little FM wub before dropping it forever. I craved the bassline and walked away even hungrier. I wish I could have Skrillex’s “Chicken Soup” drop right about now.

As we walked out, we saw a massive mural of Heath Ledger’s Joker. We walked to a gas station to buy water, and it felt as if we were in a David Lynch movie. A small old woman kept saying “OH NY GODD” at everything, really emphasizing her substitution of “N” for “M” in the word “my”. A big preppy bro walked in and said, Good Morning everyone, in a business like voice. We got the fuck out of there.

We got back to the Air Bnb in South Beach and Lulu and I started cooking up Tchami type lackluster deep house beats. It was fun to make a spoof of this music, then I realized we could probably be bigger and make more money if we made this crap. But in the end I went to bed happy to be liking what I like.

BIG BASS. IN YOUR FACE. SIREN SCREECHES. MAKE YA EARS BLEED. PULSING WUBS. EMO LYRICS. THE SWAGGER IS STORED IN THE SAW WAVE.

Don’t You Worry Chile: Ultra Miami Day 2

March 29 2025

We trotted around South Beach and drank at Versace Mansion before coming home to nap, where I cooked up a complextro drop in our muggy little kitchen. The vibe in South Beach is family vacation— lots of old folks taking pictures of their awkward teens with big bowls of guacamole in front of them. These kinds of places make me miss my parents.

We went to Ultra around 7 to catch Knife Party, only arriving to catch their last song, “Bonfire”. The stage they were playing was clearly the base stage, as evinced by the next artist, Crankdat, who played nonstop brostep that made the crowd the most raucous I’ve ever seen. It was euphoric just to watch from the side— the head banging was carnal. It felt more raw and special than it looks in videos, which, to me, can appear overly machismo and scary.

We wandered over to the main stage to see Axwell, one of the founding members of Swedish House Mafia. The set was gorgeous, and felt like the right moment to actually go into the main stage crowd and experience the full Ultra EDM ensemble.

Major takeaways from Axwell: like with Alesso, Axwell proved that there is something in the Swedish brain that is just masterful with chords and melodies. Something that seems impossible to teach to anyone not Scandinavian. The crowd was euphoric, though quite old and annoying. The guy in front of me was probably in his late 40s, dressed like a suburban baseball coach, backwards hat and Oakleys, cramming a hot dog down his wife’s mouth with one hand and reaching his hands up in ecstasy with the other. Axwell said something like “This next song is a song I made with Sebastian Ingrosso many years ago”, referring to “Don’t You Worry Child”, and the baseball coach guy reached up both hands, screaming “SEBASTIAN!!!!”

We sauntered back to the artist area as Axwell played his last song, which had some of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies I’ve ever heard. I started verbally freaking out to Lulu.

We watched Skrillex from side stage. It was apparently a homecoming show for him, as he hadn’t played Ultra in like 10 years. It was magnificent— it will take every fiber of my being not to just gush and fan girl over this set endlessly. Lulu and I have met a lot of celebrities and idols of ours at this point, and the conclusion we’ve reached is this: Everyone is actually just a very boring, normal human at the end of it all. That being said, we frequently discuss who we could meet that would truly humble us, would cause us to clam up with mortal nerves. Skrillex on stage felt like this— not human but some sort of divine force specially crafted to manipulate every brain cell of this weak, human audience. Damien Marley came out for Make it Bun Dem, Flowdan for Rumble. He leaked tons of new shit that was just unfathomable, reminding me of my first experience hearing Skrillex in 2010— off my older brothers big ass school laptop at 7 AM on the kitchen counter before school. I thought about it all day.

This set made me want to scramble home immediately and make new sounds to dance to. Lulu had the same idea. Dance is infinitely mutable. It will always be a mutant. And a perfect set will end the Festival Illness of “I need to be here, I want this, we should do this” and hammer nirvana into your brain so that you’re perfectly content to go home and let your cells continue vibrating and glowing.

FOMO brought us to E11EVEN, one of the famous 24-hour nightclubs of Miami where Diplo was slated to DJ later. We got pretty beat just waiting around to some boring d**p h*use DJ although the vibes of the dancers were fantastic, dressed in oddly drag-y jellyfish getups that evoked Bjork.

I went to bed with only one regret— missing Hardwell.

That’s What DJing’s All About: Ultra Miami Day 3

March 30 2025

Julian had somehow secured press passes on an afternoon yacht ride through Miami Bay with a DJ set by Kaskade. We arrived to the boat early, filing in alongside the crowd of 50 or so who matched the vibe of Ultra in general, though a bit more professional media class and less PLUR. We went up top once the boat had gone out into the bay, finding not Kaskade, but yet another mustached guy DJing coworker deep house to the millennial enthused. We went back downstairs for another Mojito and then it began to rain torrentially. Water streaked down the sides of the yacht like a slip and slide. It sounded like the music continued, though, which we later found out was achieved by throwing up a massive tarp over the DJ equipment, AND the audience.

Returning upstairs for Kaskade’s set 3 hours into the yacht cruise, he played one song before it began to pour down again. They tossed the tarp over all of us. Kaskade looked like a chiseled Greek sculpture, perhaps one of the most classically beautiful men I have ever seen in my life. He would be made king of an ancient village for his cheekbones alone. He DJed some euphoric beats that I’ve never heard, before his CDJs started to malfunction and he was forced to just play songs one after another with no mixing. I found it very badass, yet was getting sloshed on by buckets of rain that seeped through the tarp over and over, so we went back downstairs. When we docked, we were forced to get off the boat despite the continuing rain and flash flooding, sprinting for about a mile into downtown Miami and Ubering back to south beach.

This experience left me exhausted and I was a bit sad to miss Steve Aoki, Four Tet, and Flux Pavilion because of my yacht tiredness. We all sat down on the couch and watched Kanye’s strange new interview with DJ Akademiks in which he wears a black klansmen outfit and calls basically everyone he’s ever met a faggot. It was really sad. He is dealing with pain and betrayal in the strangest way: pinning the reason his friends have abandoned him on Jews for seemingly no reason, perhaps because it is easier than realizing the more probable: that he is completely insufferable.

What started as a spontaneous watch of this interview ended in the 4 of us sitting in profound silence, heartbroken to see the most deranged downfall of an American idol.

We had essentially agreed to just not go back to Ultra. We felt we had gotten the full experience. I sat on the ground and made sounds with Serum 2 on my laptop while others scrolled instagram. And then, like Paul on the way to Damascus—

The spirit of EDM saved me from my depression.

I thought about the lineup I was missing and stood up to announce “Let’s all go to Ultra right now.” Julian and Spencer were dead set on crashing, so Lulu and I ran outside and Ubered back over.

We walked in for half of Zedd, which was actually quite excellent. His remix of “One More Time” featured the razor bass that I adore Zedd for. He played “Beautiful Now” which I had forgotten about but loved. He closed on Clarity, which made me sob during both drops. As I write this I’m becoming emotional again. I had almost missed this for no reason. At any moment, pure ecstasy is just around the corner, you just have to reach for it.

We got a drink at the slightly muddy artist beach and walked over to a different stage to see deadmau5. On the way we walked alongside Zedd and I said “Great set”, and he said “thank you”. We walked backstage of the smaller stage and saw deadmau5 standing in a red suit right outside his trailer. I was starstruck but cautious as I’m ultimately loyal to Porter and deadmau5 was a freakish bully to Porter on twitter a while ago. We watched the set, which was a “Retrospective” from the audience. It was refreshing to hear electro for the first time at the festival. Which reminds me of a sidebar:

I was shocked that nothing of our world had trickled down (or up) to Ultra yet. For writing purposes I’ll be as frank and journalistically bland as possible, but none of the “indie sleaze” or “electroclash revival” or (fuck it) “trap sleaze” shit that so seems to be in the spotlight had really manifested in anything at Ultra, save for maybe Skrillex’s set using tons of DJ Smokey tags throughout. It wasn’t really until deadmau5 that I realized this. There had been no square waves, not much sexy music whatsoever. Mostly just huge festival Swedish EDM, techno, brostep, and d**p house.

I didn’t hear one Brat interpolation or mashup the entire festival. In fact, the only time I heard Charli at all was in the lobby at the Moxy Hotel the next day, which was playing “Hot In It”. I think there is much to learn about Miami from this.

Anyways back to deadmau5. Steve Duda came out almost immediately to play a bunch of BSOD songs with Joel in a matching red suit. This blew my fucking mind because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them DJing together before. BSOD “This is the Hook” is one of my favorite track IDs ever, and they played that and some other random unreleased that was making fall so desperately in love with electro and complextro. Someone asked me in the audience who that guy was. I explained it was the guy who made Serum (and Serum 2) who was also half of the deadmau5 project BSOD. The guy did not care or react at all.

Deadmau5 set was excellent and he had his expected doomer irony humor throughout. It doesn’t really work on me unfortunately. I favor the sincerity of Zedd repeating over and over “This is the best Ultra ever, this song means so much to me, you all look beautiful” etc over deadmau5’s “Look at those fireworks instead of my set. You payed for it. And how about that $500,000 bottle service? Everything is fucked”.

A particularly maddening moment was when he began to play the extended 9 minute version of Strobe which has a gorgeous 4 minute intro before the beat drops. I began to cry, before Joel came on the mic to say, “Another one of my stupidly long DJ intros… sigh… well let’s just let it ride I guess.” 5 seconds later: “Ah fuck it”, as he presses a button which causes the beat to drop suddenly.

“That’s what DJing’s all about!” Joel says excitedly. I ponder this for the rest of Strobe. He’s right of course— the DJ should be vain and only want to play what they want to play. They should be vain and self-interested. It’s just the best when the DJ’s self-interest matches the crowd’s interest. And why should not, headlining at Ultra?

We went backstage after the set and I wasn’t interested in talking to Joel but got a selfie with Steve Duda and I told him that I had been playing around with Serum 2 until the moment we came the festival. He complimented my Avicii hat and told me Tim was a close friend of his. I felt activated.

Spencer ended up showing up at the end because he had been texting Afrojack who said there was an afters at the festival on a yacht. We meandered over to this massive, docked yacht, and Afrojack dapped us up and got us on the boat. He’s extremely tall and welcoming. We got a drink and he started DJing up top, although his set was pretty underwhelming and… dare I say it… d**p house. I considered typing out “PLAY COOL (REMIX)” on my phone to show him but decided against it. Afrojack is one of the most influential producers to me and to even have been personally acknowledged by him felt crazy.

It was around this time that I began to feel my fan-blues going away. As an artist attending a festival you’re not playing at, there is something inherently frustrating about everything. It’s painful to be a Doer in a Goer world. You want to do instead of go. You feel guilty not Doing while the other artists are up there Doing. You’re just a Goer like everyone else.

But eventually, after three hard-earned days of Going, I felt acceptance of Going, of Fangirling, of being Starstruck. I think these things are important to carry on through life— it’s what makes things Aspirational and attractive in the first place. I can’t be inspired by Zedd if I discount him as a normal German guy who made some beats and got lucky, if only just to save my own pride as a fellow Creator. Hell no. I should view him as a cultural god, an untouchable force, something spiritually rare. This is EDM.

In the Angel world of EDM, artists are gods. There is no “street cred”, no “She just like me fr”. They are not like you. We are not like them. They have different colored blood, eyes that see all spectrums of light, ears that hear the resonances that the commoners can’t even describe. Before Ultra, I didn’t know this. There was an appeal to commonality I thought that a DJ should have to be an effective mover of people. Now, I know the opposite to be true.

Ultra Miami taught me that to DJ is to approach Deity status.

GOOD MORNING, CRUEL WORLD.

a Blog by Angel Emoji Frost Prost.

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