MP3 PREP: 4 Essentials of III Points 2023

As the festival season charges full steam ahead, the preparation for each event becomes a task in itself. Welcome to MP3 PREP, your ultimate guide to navigating the pulsating world of music festivals. Here’s what you need to know about this year’s III Points Festival.

Ahh, Miami — South Florida’s City of Sin; a metropolitan paradise surrounded by water, drenched in Latin-American culture and sporting some of the best food and music America has to offer. Anytime the III Points Festival rolls into town, the already-exuberant nightlife comes alive for music fans across genres of dance, rock, and hip-hop. III Points is always an outrageous, colorful celebration of art and music, but this year is particularly special: III Points’ 10th anniversary is quickly approaching, and they’re bringing the heat.

Featuring massive headliners including Skrillex, Fred Again.., and Lane 8, plus rock icon Iggy Pop and 90’s hip-hop group Bone Thugs and Harmony, this year’s III Points Festival promises to be an ecstatic display of dance music, legacy acts, and vibrant Miami culture.

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But, attending III Points is a much different experience than your traditional music festival thanks to the unique stature of Miami’s creative legacy, warm October weather and distinctly urban environment. No need to worry — we’ve got you covered. Here are four reasons to get excited about Florida’s wildest music festival.

Grimes brings her conceptual Elf.Tech ARt rAve to Miami

The AI revolution is officially underway, and there’s been some heavy discourse over its immediate and eventual impact on the music and creative industries at large. Yes, there have been countless songs already created using AI services in 2023. Whether that’s good news or not, that’s up to you. But one thing’s for sure: Grimes’ “ElfTech ARt rAve,” which she debuted earlier this year at Miami’s ULTRA Music Festival, is an entirely new take on AI and live performances.

The AI technology Grimes uses for these special shows, aided by CreateSafe’s Triniti technology and digital art collection platform, Zora, is a multipurpose visual and physical experience for fans to integrate themselves into the performance — quite literally. Select fans were brought on stage to participate in a Q&A with Grimes’ AI chatbot program, GRiMES V1. Their conversation, and even stranger, their live brain frequencies, were recorded and projected alongside Grimes AI-driven visuals during her performance.

Throw in some fantastical elven visuals, and a complimentary virtual Grimes avatar, which unlocks access to Grimes’ ELF.TECH web universe, and you’ve got one hell of an experience. Whether you’re a fan of Grimes’ music or not, this is definitely something you’ll want to witness.

Despacio party

For the uninitiated, III Points’ Despacio party is an integral part of the experience, featuring a weekend-long dance extravaganza. The Despacio party is a vinyl-only event that incorporates a specially designed sound system created by music legends James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem), David Dewaele and Stephen Dewaele (Soulwax).

Their mission is simple: Provide a club experience that puts dancing at the forefront and takes DJs off their pedestal. It’s a time capsule into the mid-90s club scene, complete with dark red lights and a single, shining disco ball to boot. Traditionally, the music at the Despacio party mostly revolved around disco, soul and retro-house vibes.

John Summit B2B Green Velvet

This one is legendary — today’s biggest house music superstar, The “King of Benders,” John Summit, shares the stage with a pioneer of modern tech-house aesthetics and party-centric energy, Green Velvet. This one is going to be… intoxicating.

Green Velvet is an anomaly of sorts — a DJ who experienced, and helped to foster, the height of Chicago’s house music scene throughout the 90s with hits like “Flash,” which topped the US Dance charts at number 1 in 1995, and with charismatic techno-club anthems like “La La Land” in 2001. But he’s still electrifying dance floors across the world with modern classics like ‘Deceiver’ with Chris Lake. In 2023, he’s still a must-see act across North American dance music festivals.

John Summit, who’s quickly become a dance music and pop-culture icon, is arguably the hottest face in modern dance music, with global hits like “Where You Are” garnering multiple remixes across the EDM genre, and “La Danza,” embracing a Latin-house fusion that seems curated for Miami culture.

John Summit B2B Green Velvet is a symbolic passing of the baton; a multi-generational performance that embraces house music’s timeless aesthetics and celebrates the genre’s increasingly mainstream appeal without bitterness or loss of culture.

Miami Weather (yes, October is STILL hot… and rainy)

Florida may be known as “the sunshine state,” but the likelihood of a rain-free weekend getaway in Florida is quite low. Plus, October’s average temperature in Miami hovers in the mid-80s during the day, only dipping into the 70s when the sun goes down.

Thankfully, Miami loves fashion, so it’s a great excuse to strut in your most fabulous warm-weather attire and rave outfits. Funky sunglasses are optional, but emergency ponchos are not. Miami is used to rainy weather, so there’s little-to-no risk of shows getting canceled due to inclement weather. Just be prepared to get a little wet, and you’ll be fine.

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