Kat Says: “Miami Is The Moment”
I saw the Miami All-Stars of Today, Tomorrow and Always; and I loved every second.
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Hey Friends,
I’ve been working on this essay about Skrillex for a couple weeks now (mostly in my head. I’m tired), and I’m definitely going to share it with you, but—fuck it, dude! I have to tell you about last Friday.
Reppin’ in front of Club Space after throwing ass at the Keep Hush UK party.
Around 8:22 p.m., I awoke from a 30-minute nap, snuggled between the giant cushions of my couch and the aging millennial urge to cancel all my plans. I wanted to embrace the warm comfort, not get in my car and drive 40 minutes to Club Space!
Still, I knew I should.
Seven days earlier, I’d paid for a ticket to Keep Hush UK at The Ground. The Ground is the cleverly-named first floor venue at Club Space. It caps at about 500, and it was set to host the most Miami of Miami lineups the local mainstream club scene has seen in recent memory.
“But Kat,” you might say. “The party is called Keep Hush UK? What does the United Kingdom have to do with the 305?”
Good question. A quick look at the Keep Hush UK website explains that the company “is a global underground dance community whose primary mission is to ‘Back the Underground.’”
“We see underground dance music as an agent of positive change, source of togetherness and creator of joy,” the About Us continues. “Everything that we do sets out to protect and encourage these values in our scene through supporting diverse grassroots communities. We primarily carry this out through our live broadcasted ticketed events which are optimised to showcase DJs and promote them to a potentially unlimited online audience. We aim to capture culturally significant moments in the scene, which leave our community and artists feeling inspired.”
I have to say, when it comes to the Miami underground, they kinda nailed it.
I first saw the event flyer on DJ Craze’s Instagram (the DJ so powerful, he was politely banned from competing in the DMC World Championships after winning three years in a row and gifted a set of golden turntables). I am a big fan, and when I peeped the rest of the lineup, my jaw dropped.
Topher The Alien, Sel.6, Coffintexts, Jonny From Space b2b Nick Leon, Danny Daze, Craze and Shinobi in that order. A full-on hometown flex featuring some of the most notable and relevant south Florida talent representing the old head legends and the new school crop.
Any chance I get to see Danny from Miami freak the decks, I’m gonna take it. He’s the one dude on planet Earth that makes experimental noise feel like booty music. He and Craze one after another was more than worth the price of admission, but the chance to see the night build on the back of the scene’s buzziest names (and to see Nick Leon who I’ve watched grow from thoughtful novice to budding beacon of Miami taste around the world) was something I just had to make the drive down from Broward County for.
Then I saw that tickets were a measly $15, and I was like “should I buy two or three just to show support?!”
(Lol, I didn’t do that. I’m broke. Pls subscribe to the paid tier of this newsletter so I can be less broke. I love you!)
“Nick Leon is going to be incredible,” my friend Nick Daniels texted me. I was looking for some convincing, and he was there to give me the final push. “Plus Coffintexts and then Danny Daze.”
I left the denial stage and moved on to rationalization.
“I don’t have to stay until 5 a.m. I can just go down there, see what all the hype is about with these new kids, make sure I catch some of the Jonny and Nick b2b, then drive back to Fort Lauderdale and get enough sleep. This isn’t my last chance to see Danny Daze and Craze. I’ve seen them before, and I’ll see them again. Blah blah blah.”
An hour later, and I was in the car, ready to show up for my city, reppin’ hard in my United States of Bass: Miami jacket.
I arrived around 10:55, which means I regrettably missed Topher The Alien’s set. If I could go back in a time machine, I would have made it at doors. Kinda want to say I saw the whole thing from start to finish, but I made it pretty close!
I did, however, make it with plenty of time to fall in love with Sel.6. Some shallow research shows that she’s a Broward girl, like me! She brought deep and dark nostalgic rave funk to her set. When I walked in, she was playing a technofied song that sampled Soulja Boy’s “Kiss Me Through The Phone.” What’s not to love?
Gianmarco thought DJ Craze’s set was “neat!”
The small crowd lingered timidly in a semi-circle around the dance floor, leaving lots of space between themselves and the DJ. The stage was populated with cute scene darlings à la Boiler Room, which makes sense, because a camera was set up on a tripod right in front of the decks, and there was at least one live cameraman filming from all angles.
Now that I know what Keep Hush UK is, I understand that the whole thing was being live streamed! I imagine it will be uploaded to the Keep Hush UK YouTube page sometime soon. Good thing, too, because this was a Miami night for the books.
It only took 15 minutes or so for Sel.6 to break down the social barrier between her and the crowd. My bestie Gianmarco showed up soon after, fitting right in with the fashionable rave freaks in a ‘90s-style blue-and-white windbreaker he nabbed at a thrift store. The DJ dropped “Firestarter” by The Prodigy, and the audience erupted in dutiful sing-along.
I’m observing Dry January, so I hit the back bar and ordered as many waters and Sprites as it took to hit the $20 car minimum (that would be two of each). I ran into Nick Leon who was waiting at the food bar for a grilled cheese sandwich (Club Space may be a decade-spanning dirt hole [in the best way], but they sure know how to bring the amenities).
I congratulated him on his life. His track "Xtasis" with DJ Babatr was just named Resident Advisor’s “Track of The Year for 2022,” and his social media has been flooded with travel pics as he carries his solidified sound blending Latin sonics, tribal rhythms and south Florida bass heaviness to clubs around the world.
“It’s so great to be back,” he told me, smiling like he really meant it. We talked about how much seeing the world made us both realize how special south Florida really is.
It’s a beautiful thing to see the world and fall back in love with the place you were born or raised. It’s normal to want to escape the hellish highways of your past, but to actually come back and see the beauty in its strangeness—to enjoy the humid air, tropical plants, sunburnt scammers and gauche displays of new money wealth—that is a full circle moment worth relishing.
Okay. Those things are very specific to south Florida, but it’s true! Our bizarre underbelly and flashy, coke-fueled facade mixes with the perma-summer sweat to create a certain kind of wild cool.
We’re a people that stay up late and never stop scheming. We’re always looking for a good time, but keep one eye trained for bullshit. We get right to the point but take our sweet fuckin’ time about life, and that somehow translated into the music and attitude of the DJs I saw last night.
Coffintexts came next to deliver a moody beat-down of dark techno beats. Her style is absolutely energetic, and yet somehow very brooding. The crowd began to settle into its insanity, letting go of any hesitation via chemical courage and pure sonic possession.
A lovely young man in fashionable bondage gear asked to “hide behind” me to enjoy what smelled like poppers (although those could have belonged to someone else). Finance bros in full-on suits started letting loose, beer cups sloshing in their hands; while lines of drunk girls snaked hand-in-hand in and out of the throbbing masses, running a sloppy circuit to the bathroom, the dance floor, the bar and back.
I ran into my friend and fellow writer Grant Albert, who just nabbed his first official cover story in the Miami New Times. He wrote about Danny Daze’s recently released compilation Homecore! Miami All-Stars. It packs in 44 tracks from a wide array of Miami-bred producers, and spans the full history of our scene, including every artist on that Friday night’s lineup.
I discovered a free-play Pacman machine and tried a couple times to beat the high score (no gas). Then I ran into my friend Patrick Walsh, self-described “DJ and Frozen Lemonade Purveyor” who has long worked via radio shows and events promotion to spread the good gospel of the Miami scene to the world.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he asked me, gazing at the packed club losing its shit for Johnny From Space and Nick Leon’s tropical-laced techno. “I mean, you know how it usually is. It’s hard to get anyone to come out and support the locals.”
He’s not wrong. I can’t say the local DJs are often the ones to get much love in Miami, at least not in the established clubs that lure in big money spenders. There is an interesting underground, but to see that scene get the spotlight and pack the house so tight was inspiring, to say the least.
I took a moment to admire what I had long already acknowledged: Miami is having its moment, and not just as a vacation destination, but as a tastemaker and leader of culture to come.
Further Reading: Kat Says: “I’ve Watched You Chaaaaaange” Reflections on III Points, Dillon Francis, Miami and myself.
The two friends whipped us into a frenzy, dropping beats that absolutely pummeled but still forced my hips to do whatever white girl version of cumbia dancing I’ve picked up through the years.
My new smartwatch alerted me that I’d hit my 11k step goal for the day. It was only 1:30 a.m.
“We’re going to make it to Danny Daze!” I yelled.
“Yeah,” Gianmarco laughed. “I don’t know why you ever doubted yourself.”
When Daze took the stage, he had his whole face covered in some surreal black veil with rave shades laid on top. I was like “wtf, how can he see?” as he worked the decks like some kind of spice-addled Paul Atreides.
All of the DJs last night were great. The whole vibe was beyond stellar and full of love and freedom, but Danny is just some other species. He didn’t hold back a single ounce, jumping right into a glitched-out parade of noise. He dropped his psycho-ass edit of Trick Daddy and Trina’s Miami classic “Nann” as he hovered over the turntables, bobbing his whole body and twisting nobs like a psychedelic sea creature.
His set got heavier with every track, peaking with a song-along to Piri & Tommy's recent hit "On & On” and a perfectly-timed dip into UK dubstep wub-wubs. Craze was standing off to the side, absolutely geeking on the d’n’b rhythms. It was cute to see the love the DJs had for each other. It’s nice to feel like Miami has a scene built on mutual admiration.
Picking right up where Daze left off, Craze delivered a monstrous set of drum and bass mayhem. His bass was so heavy and the noises so nasty. It was nothing short of awe-inspiring, and almost offensive. How can one man have so much flavor?
As he worked through some reggae-infused hype shit, I looked to Gianmarco at my right and noticed a couple wrapped in a soft embrace, foreheads touching as if they were the only two people in the room; a lonely island of romance in a raging sea of molly-mouthed maniacs.
Truly, it was an incredibly diverse crowd. Old heads, queers, goths, fashion junkies, suits, queers, normies and ravers of all shades bouncing to the beats. Gianmarco and I tried to take a break and sit on the couches in the back, but I ran like a madman back to the floor when Craze dropped The Prodigy’s “Breathe.”
The crowd had thinned by the end of his hour-long set, but he didn’t walk away from the decks without dropping Uncle Luke’s seminal hit “Scarred” and some OG Miami bass. I got down on my hands to twerk to the classics, a man in a Miami Herald hat gettin’ low as his knees would allow.
Shinobi of Craze’s Slow Roast Records set picked up to close out the evening, but by then it was past 4 a.m., and I only had enough strength left in me to stick around for 15 minutes or so. Gianmarco and I slowly danced our way toward the exit, smiling ear to ear and covered in sweat.
I was on such a high, thanking the rave gods that I’d pulled myself off of my couch eight hours earlier. I didn’t give a shit that I’d sleep through the morning.
I hit up my bud David Sinopoli, one of the Club Space co-owners, and begged him to send me the full recording.
“Thank God this is captured in time, hahaha,” I texted. “V inspiring.”
“Yeah, the kids are alright Kat,” he texted me back. “We are in good hands.”
Alright! There you have it. The first Kat Scrawls essay of 2023.
The music world is just getting itself back up and running after the holiday break, but I did update the existing Kat Scrawls Weekly playlist with the two songs I feel are absolute must-listens so far this year.
The rest of the playlist continues to showcase my favorites songs of 2022. I also put them in a new playlist, which you can check out and follow for posterity.
How do you like the Monday send out, btw? Better than Friday? Do you prefer Friday? Do you wish I’d send this out a different day entirely? Do you care? Lmk!
Coming Up
I’ll be uploading my video interview with Giolì & Assia this week. Stay tuned on my YouTube page and keep your eyes peeled for that upload. Otherwise, uh, that’s it for now!
SEE YOU NEXT NEWSLETTER <3
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!
That first comment about Craze tho hahahahah :)