Photography by Dennis Sebayan
Posted date: August 2006
July 1, 2006
The Arena at Pier 10, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico
By Dennis Sebayan
Puerto Rico gets hot all year round, but on July 1, Ultra Music Festival promoters raised mercury levels even more with UMF Caribbean: The WarmUp. A precursor event to their upcoming winter beach music festival, headliners The Crystal Method performed a solid DJ set, followed by hard house hero Erick Morillo in the main room. Dillinja & Lemon D as well as Adam F held court in the bombastic, spastic drum & bass room.
Just because it isn’t the Miami installment doesn’t mean the UMF crew would eschew pulling out all the stops, creating a new dance music event standard on the Caribbean’s shining star. They transformed popular nightlife spot The Arena at Pier 10 (in Old San Juan) into a hi-tech audio-visual wonderland—complete with a few firsts. Event promoters flew in the same laser-light show company used for their Florida events, giving Puerto Rico attendees their first ever laser-light spectacle of that caliber.
The histrionic FX display added whole new depth and dimension to the cavernous venue, as giant strobes flashed white hot pulses, lighting up everyone in the packed room. Unrelenting lasers streamed across the crowd in flaring bursts as well. And what Ultra show would be complete without those slinky, upbeat and provocative dancers sharing stage with the headliners? I don’t know where they find them, but these dancers—replete with the ubiquitous UMF logo tees—can really interact with the crowd, giving them a proper taste of the festival flava.
But UMF is more known for uniting the world’s best musical talent under one roof; the Puerto Rico edition was no different. Since this Onbeat correspondent was more into the big room magic brought on by the headliners, let’s just say the moments spent with amped drum & bass fans in the jungle room were hi-octane, to say the least. The heads were going ballistic to the fury of uptempo beats and buzz saw riffs, jumping around with gleeful abandon.
Back in the main room, Crystal Method not only played some of the best breaks in a seamless mix, but they also put on an engaging tag team show. Scott Kirkland stood behind the tables, serving up one fierce bassline after the other, while Ken sauntered up to the front of the stage and jumped around, making finger ears at the back of his head. An endearing Method moment, if there was any.
Crystal Method’s laid-back, yet energized set kept the crowd in high-spirits, paving the way until early morning when Erick Morillo went on. The Subliminal Records star and label head took advantage of the venue’s big-room setting by playing some nasty progressive and fierce diva vocal house. It was as if Crobar, NYC on a Saturday night was transported to Old San Juan, as Morillo pushed the crowd to threshold. At this point, the venue was filled comfortably with enthused clubbers, who stayed to hear ever beat of Morillo’s blistering set.
From the looks of this first-rate production, one thing goes for sure—the Ultra Music Festival crew is unrivaled when it comes to throwing quality, engaging dance music events. And since this is only the warm-up event to a much bigger outdoors beach party, we can only expect to be blown away even more this winter.
