Richie Hawtin
Photo: Mute

BARCELONA, Spain — With a magic spell apparently hovering over the eighth annual Sonar International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Arts, life for the techno lover was as it should be.

Heroes of electronic music's underground such as Matthew Herbert, Gez Varley, Luomo and Andrew Weatherall were elevated, if briefly, to the level of superstars during the festival's final two days (see "Sigur Ros, Aphex Twin Heat Up Barcelona Fest"), where they performed to crowds numbering in the tens of thousands Friday and Saturday nights.

Add to that a three-hour DJ set by Masters At Work and the double-bill tandem of Richie Hawtin and Jeff Mills separated by only an hour, and the result was a spectacle that Barcelona — maybe even the world — hasn't known the likes of. Part rave, part meeting of the global techno cognoscenti, Sonar was a treasure trove of unforgettable sonic delights.

Like the tapas bars peppering Barcelona's crowded streets with delicious snacks, virtually every musical flavor was available for tasting — from jagged abstractions (Richard Devine) and funky concoctions (Jazzanova) to chemical reactions (Matmos) and relentless propulsions (Hawtin, Mills).

Friday night's program presented the sort of dilemma one only dreams of. Simultaneously, at 2 a.m., one could hear the staple platters of Masters At Work's Little Louie Vega and Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez working their soulful magic on a massive undulating froth of a dance floor; Andrew Weatherall (yes, the Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine producer) and partner Radioactive Man in their Two Lone Swordsmen guise, emitting gritty electro stomps from a bank of wires and consoles, as a swarming crowd wiggled euphorically with each added rhythm; and the skirted Luomo (alias Finland's Vladislav, responsible for last year's epic Vocal City) chauffeuring thousands into the dizzying spiral wobbling around his loose grooves under the night sky in the site's open-air venue.

No less gratifying than the fantastic music, however, was wandering among the three sound arenas and observing the whoops and cheers that arose whenever an older underground — Luomo's "Market," for example — took hold of a dance floor tuned in to every turn of the table, every segue, every knob twiddle and every glitch.

This was nowhere more evident than when England's Gez Varley (a.k.a. G-Man) began his outdoor-stage set just before the stroke of 5 a.m. on Saturday morning. A legend since co-founding the pioneer techno duo LFO (with Mark Bell) in the late '80s, Varley has issued a slew of minimal-techno templates during the past decade to little or no fanfare beyond the underground realm. Justice prevailed at Sonar, however, as Gez churned out tracks imbued with the deft subtlety he's mastered, including a couple from his dynamite 1998 G-Man LP and his upcoming return, Bayou Paradis, to a crowd of cheering thousands, his beats even reverberating in the site's bumper-car course.

Although Saturday night's lineup again tilted heavily toward the lesser knowns, the weight of double headliners Richie Hawtin and Jeff Mills threatened to tip the balance in the opposite direction. Relative newcomers such as Germany's Matthias Schafhauser and Heiko Laux, Britain's Random Factor and Ralph Lawson and Finland's Jori Hulkkonen laid down minimal techno and house in all their futuristic forms. Ultimately, though, they were no match for the scene's stars.

Employing the enormous sub-bass thrust that's become the backbone of his dynamic live set, Hawtin was typically unyielding in his intensity, dropping the beat only briefly in order to work the floor into a screaming frenzy. Much like Mills an hour later (Hawtin hails from Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Mills' Detroit roots), Hawtin created a massive sound that relied on the minimal foundations of pounding low-end beats and hypnotically looped hi-hats or analog synth grooves. Similarly, Mills stuck to his signature rapid-fire triple-turntable antics, never allowing a rhythm to grow stale while sneaking in snippets from his bag of classic tracks from the last decade, including "The Bells" and "Casa." Tucked neatly between the two masters was an excellent live set by Phuture 303, one of the originators of the influential acid-house sound that emerged from Chicago and New York in the late '80s. Phuture's DJ Pierre and Spanky, who cut such gems as "Acid Tracks" back in the day, were joined onstage Saturday by two new members, each of whom manned a different console and handled separate rhythmic duties.

If this year's Sonar had one fault, it was that the four-to-the-floor rhythm held too much sway at a festival founded on the spirit of experimentation. Genius English producer Matthew Herbert, billed as "Mistakes," closed out the final night with a DJ set (starting at 7:30 a.m.!) heavy on schizophrenia and free-form, collective fun. After opening with the Ohio Players' "Funky Worm" and segueing into James Brown's "The Payback," Herbert dove deep, excavating treasures that spanned the left field (French house duo Motorbass' "Flying Fingers," Romanthony's "Bring You Up"), hyperclassic ("Billie Jean," "Stayin' Alive") and ultra-new (Green Velvet's red-hot "Lala Land," a mind-bending glitch-techno mix of Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On").

If Sonar is the pantheon of experimental music, Herbert dusted off its pillars for all to see and love, then brought the house down.

• Plastikman
• Luomo
• Richie Hawtin
• Jeff Mills
• Matmos

"Little" Louie Vega

MIAMI — The third day of the 16th Annual Winter Music Conference, like all the days before it, offered dozens of events showcasing the latest in dance music's many subgenres, including hip-hop and house. But the menu at Masters at Work's Sunset Ritual event offered all that and more, with fare including classic soul, live R&B and even world music.

Masters at Work — the production duo of Brooklyn's Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez and Bronx-bred "Little" Louie Vega, nephew of Latin music icon and Fania All-Stars founding member Hector LaVoe — met through Todd Terry, a hip-hop and house music DJ and producer who started the original Masters at Work team with Gonzalez. Since the mid-'90s, Vega and Gonzalez have combined their influences to become one of the most important house production teams, their name a badge signifying the highest quality dance music available. Sunset Ritual revealed the breadth of the Masters at Work team, which grows with each year. Collaborating with DJs, dancers, musicians, vocalists and other producers, Masters at Work are the first house producers to create a musical and cultural concept, which they reinforce with each new production.

The event kicked off at noon on Monday at the open-air Opium Garden club, the site of several of the conference's biggest and best events. Gonzalez opened with a set of late-'80s house classics the industry-only crowd (admission to Sunset Ritual was by invitation only, or a steep $25 cover; WMC badges were not admitted) lapped up. Tony Touch, or as he's fondly known, Tony Toca, came on next with an old-school hip-hop set full of scratching and quick cuts. He then moved into a dancehall reggae set before ending with breaks, such as Pal Joey's "Hot Music," that transitioned smoothly into Vega's full-on house set.

Vega is a major force in house music, as both a producer and DJ. Often one of the first DJs to get unreleased music, Vega can often guarantee success for producers by spinning their tracks. His Dance Ritual party in New York City and Masters at Work yearly extravaganzas in Central Park have only added to his import and visibility. As a producer, Vega is responsible for some of house music's best work. In 1996, he engineered the Nuyorican Soul Orchestra project, a meeting ground of old- and new-school that included Roy Ayers, George Benson, singer La India and DJ Jazzy Jeff in a modern reinterpretation of some of Latin music's greatest ensembles, such as the SalSoul Orchestra.

The Masters at Work label, and Vega's productions in particular, tear up dance floors across the world. Last year, Masters at Work released "Elements of Life," "Life Goes On" featuring singer Arnold Jarvis, and Japanese singer Monday Michiru's "Sunshine After the Rain," all essential singles in any self-respecting house DJ's crate.

Vega's set started at about 4 p.m. and moved quickly into banging, peak-hour tracks that were a little harder than what he's known to play. Starting off with a few jazzy tracks, Vega headed into an assault of instrumental tracks built from Latin and African polyrhythms. The dance floor filled up to near capacity by the time the sun set, cloaking the Opium Garden in darkness save for a few well-placed rice paper lanterns and torches that reflected the club's Eastern theme.

At 9 p.m., the live performances began. Singer Julie McKnight, the vocalist on last year's club hit "Finally" (originally recorded by Kings of Tomorrow and recently remixed by Masters at Work), took the stage first. The crowd sang along, the tune's massive popularity making it as memorable to clubgoers as teen pop is to top-40 radio listeners.

Vibraphonist/vocalist Roy Ayers came up next, treating the crowd to his hits "Searching" and "Love Will Bring Us Back Together." The night's MC, Nigerian singer/dancer Wunmi (whose track "Ekabo" was also a hit for Masters at Work), hyped the crowd with her apocalyptic Grace Jones-meets-Tank Girl outfits, eclectic vocal technique and athletic dancing. The performance peaked when James Ingram sang his latest track, the Masters at Work-produced "Lean on Me." Those who knew the tune, already a huge hit at such underground clubs as New York City's Shelter, sang along, while those who didn't stood in awe of Ingram's flawless performance. The live portion of the night closed with an unrehearsed interchange between all of the night's performers: Wunmi's dancing, Ingram's scatting and Ayers' '60s-reminiscent pleas for universal peace, love and understanding.

• Little Louie Vega

Paul Oakenfold

MIAMI — South Beach holds the dubious honor of having the highest concentration of dance clubs in the country, and all of them produced snaking lines even on Friday, the night before the start of the Winter Music Conference.

One such event, a re-creation of the famed Parisian party Respect Is Burning, took place at the enormous Opium Garden nightclub. A throng of hundreds waited to be let inside to hear DJ Deep, who mixed the third volume of the Respect Is Burning CD series.

The Winter Music Conference, an annual dance music networking orgy, provides a showcase for the newest sounds, and although house music — electronic dance music raised in Chicago from disco's ashes — predominates, drum'n'bass, hip-hop, electro and techno are all represented during the conference's five days.

At Respect Is Burning, house music, particularly the soulful, vocal-driven version championed in New York, was the main attraction. While DJ Deep played a set that ranged from Afro-Beat (a funky, politically informed dance music born in Nigeria) to minimal instrumental tracks, several of house music's most important producers flocked to the DJ booth to exchange "white labels," or unreleased test pressings of potential dance-floor hits.

"Little" Louie Vega (half of the Masters at Work production team, along with Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez), King Britt (the Philadelphia producer behind the Slyk 130 project) and Marques Wyatt (a veteran DJ/producer from Los Angeles) came armed with their latest test pressings to hand to DJ Deep for instant dance-floor feedback.

Limited to early-bird attendees, savvy tourists and eager locals, Respect Is Burning carried on until nearly 7 a.m., the legal closing hour of Miami Beach's nightclubs.

By the following morning when the conference officially got underway, the party machine was on full tilt, with several events taking place during the day. By noon, the third annual Electronic Dance Music Festival, a massive outdoor gathering, opened in Bayfront Park, away from the beach-and-beer atmosphere of South Beach. Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox, Sasha and Digweed, Paul Van Dyk, and Deep Dish, high-paid international celebrities of dance music, shared 10 different sound "environments" with dozens of other lesser-known DJs.

Meanwhile, back in South Beach, avatars of Detroit techno, including "godfather" Juan Atkins, hosted a rooftop barbecue from noon onwards. Representing hip-hop, the "Infiltrate 3.0" event kicked off in the early evening with a smattering of independent artists, including female MCs Bahamadia and Mystik, local New York celebs Cannibal Ox, and several turntablists.

As the day progressed, still more attendees flooded Miami Beach, culminating in South Beach's main nightclub strip, Washington Avenue, turning into a sea of discarded club flyers. Street promoters kept their hustle moving into the early morning, stuffing invitations and promotional materials into any empty hand, while the DJs, producers, promoters and musicians that constitute the bulk of WMC's attendees, shuffled from club to club, taking in as many of Saturday's events as was humanly possible.

• Little Louie Vega
• Paul Oakenfold
• Paul Van Dyk
• Sasha & Digweed
• Deep Dish