Cool Hunting

Already in its third year the M3 Summit is beginning to take shape as an informative, energetic and eclectic festival. It is the ideal alternative to shivering through late March in New York. M3 in sunny Miami Beach makes you feel like you are cheating on winter with spring.

This past weekend the Surf Comber and National hotels on Collins Ave in Miami Beach hosted panel discussions with minds like Chris Anderson and Giles Peterson. The theme of this years festival revolved around the ‘Long Tail’ article by Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired magazine. The Long Tail, is a term that suggests, amongst other things, that the era of the ‘big hit’ is over and that the future economics of entertainment will be decided by mini mass markets and niche audiences. Not a revolutionary idea, but refreshing to hear from the editor of Wired.

On stage at any given time a variety of live performances were pumped through the powerful and perfectly balanced sound system. Acts such as the singular rhythm machine that is Jamie Lidell sent shock waves & smiles throughout the audience. Multimedia acts like Cold Cut confidently pushed the technical boundaries of audio visual performance, even though the overall effect was a bit tepid.

Killah Kela hosted the Sunset Sessions by both pleasing and probably frightening a few guests with his sinus and throat beat boxing talents between acts. The musical highlights of this blossoming festival included the brutal british grime and venom of the young Lady Sovereign, the free form fun of Bugz in the Attic, the fierce electronic wizardry of The Juan Maclean, the dark and unhinged bass lines of french man Vitalic in broad daylight, the seductive 3 a.m. rush of bar stars Kudu at four in the afternoon and the outrageous horn driven pomp of the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble throughout the festival.

Look for the video featuring snippets from Chris Anderson’s talk and musical highlights of M3, later this week.

Contributed by m ss ng p eces