Top 10 American Electronic Music Festivals of 2015

III Points – Miami, Florida – October 9th to October 11th

III Points Festival at Mana Wynwood

Words by: Justin Shamlou

Photos by: Jason Koerner

This year’s iii Points festival was held at the glorious Mana Wynwood which had its seemingly boundless potential maximized by the event organizers. With 5 stages that addressed every niche – iii Points attracted the various sub-divisions of Miami hipsters bringing together an array of art and visual aficionados who found themselves thoroughly enjoying – while periodically stepping out of – their comfort zones. The diversity within the lineup and the organization of the stages presented attendees with the opportunity to enjoy their favorite artists and discover not only new performers but new genres entirely. In our opinion, that should be the goal of every music festival – to simultaneously entertain and educate.

Each stage crafted its own aesthetic and flawlessly harmonized with the vibe that the artists would present – all while keeping with the visual theme set by ICA Miami and the installations from their “Open Call: Web Based Art” collection. This allowed for a cohesive feel from stage to stage in spite of the drastic differences in sound and style. A minimalist warehouse juxtaposed with a quintessential rockstar concert stage would have been jarring in any other context, but at iii Points, it worked.

The entire weekend flowed smoothly from start to end, however the only technical difficulty readily apparent to festival-goers was a big one. The air conditioning was broken in the main room and on the first day – the stage rendered virtually uninhabitable. Because of this, we missed Nicolas Jaar and Bonobo – two performances which we prioritized highly. However, we got over that loss quickly once we returned to the techno/tech-house stage and was assuaged by the booming kick drums and chest rattling sub-bass from DJ Tennis’ set.

Bearing in mind the fact that we were unable to experience Nicolas Jaar or Bonobo’s performances – in addition to the fact that we are very much partial to techno and house – we would have to say the Top 5 performances of iii Points festival were (in no particular order): DJ Tennis, Aluna George, Jacques Greene, TEED, and Wolf + Lamb.

iii Points 2016 Tickets and dates are yet to be announced.