iiiPoints is Having a Trace Phase. So Are We.

III Points is next week.

We looked at the lineup, picked approximately 34 people we wanted to see, realized that was deeply unhelpful and started over.

Because you already know Four Tet is good.

You do not need us to tell you to see Floating Points.

And if Underworld starts playing “Born Slippy” somewhere in Wynwood, we’re assuming you’ll figure it out.

The more interesting thing about this year’s lineup is how much of dance music’s current identity crisis made it onto the same poster.

Trance is back.

Garage never really left.

Everyone is playing faster.

Genres that spent years being treated like separate little ecosystems are currently sleeping together.

Much better.

So these are the sets we’re actually interested in.

And why.

FIRST: TRANCE IS SNEAKING BACK INTO EVERYTHING

Not the giant-room, arms-up version that the word trance probably still puts in your head.

The good stuff is happening around the edges.

KI/KI is probably the clearest example on the lineup, but put her next to VTSS, Dr. Rubinstein B2B Ultrathem and even some of what Four Tet has been reaching for lately and you start seeing the same thing happening from different directions.

Faster tempos. Acid. Big synths. Euphoria without having to wink at it.

For a while, being tasteful in dance music meant acting slightly embarrassed by anything too emotional.

We’re apparently over that.

KI/KI is the obvious stop because she sits right in the middle of this whole thing. Old trance language without feeling like someone booked a nostalgia act.

But Dr. Rubinstein B2B Ultrathem might be the one we’re more curious about.

Rubinstein can go acid, techno, electro, trance without making the transitions feel like genre tourism. Ultrathem comes from the newer, faster, slightly feral end of the same conversation.

One knows exactly where all of this came from.

The other is part of why it sounds different now.

That’s a B2B with an actual reason to exist.

SHANTI CELESTE B2B PEACH

MAKES ALMOST TOO MUCH SENSE

This is another one.

Peach’s first EP came out on Shanti Celeste’s Peach Discs.

So this isn’t festival-booking Mad Libs.

They’re already part of the same musical family.

And that family is interesting right now because the house they came up around has gotten faster, stranger and increasingly porous with UK bass, techno and trance.

Shanti herself has basically watched that happen in real time. Bristol, Idle Hands, Hessle-adjacent club music, ’90s US house, Peach Discs. Peach comes from the next branch of that tree.

Put them together and we’re less interested in hearing two DJs take turns playing good records than hearing where they agree.

That’s the fun of a good B2B anyway.

Not you play one, I play one.

Show us the overlap.

DANNY DAZE B2B DJ GODFATHER

IS THE HISTORY LESSON WE ACTUALLY WANT

Miami electro meeting Detroit ghettotech in Miami.

Okayyyy.

Now we’re listening.

Danny Daze has spent years moving around electro, techno, Miami bass and whatever weird thing sits between them. DJ Godfather comes from Detroit’s ghettotech lineage.

Those cities have been talking to each other through bass music for a very long time.

So putting them together here feels less like a cute B2B and more like connecting wires that were already touching.

Also, this should be fast as fuck.

Educational.

UK GARAGE HAS ENTERED THE CHAT. AGAIN.

Then there is Interplanetary Criminal and MPH.

This is where the lineup starts showing another thing that’s been happening for a minute: UK garage isn’t being treated like a little UK-specific reference point anymore.

It’s just back in the bloodstream.

Speed garage basslines, 2-step drums, bass music, old rave references. You hear pieces of it everywhere now, including from DJs who would never describe themselves as garage DJs.

Interplanetary Criminal obviously sits closer to the center of that revival.

MPH gets a little nastier with it.

We’re interested in both because Miami is a very funny place to hear British music designed for sweaty rooms and terrible weather.

Turns out it works pretty well in 84 degrees too.

FLOATING POINTS / FOUR TET / DAPHNI

IS ITS OWN LITTLE FAMILY TREE

This is the part of the lineup where nobody needs an introduction.

What is interesting is having all three here at once.

Floating Points, Four Tet and Daphni have spent years making the line between “serious electronic music” and music you actually want to dance to feel increasingly stupid.

Different approaches, same general refusal to stay in one box.

And they’ve all reached the point where they can get incredibly weird in front of very large crowds.

That’s important.

Festival electronic music spent a long time getting bigger by getting simpler.

These guys somehow went the other direction.

If Four Tet plays something that sounds like it was downloaded from LimeWire in 2006 between two immaculate records, nobody even questions it anymore.

He trained us well.

COFFINTEXTS B2B DJ FUCKOFF

COULD BE THE ONE ♡

This is exactly the kind of set we go to III Points for.

Coffintexts is Miami.

DJ Fuckoff comes from the Berlin side of the current fast-club universe.

Both can move through bass, breaks, electro and whatever else is useful without treating genre like a fence.

On paper, it looks slightly unhinged.

Good.

We have enough technically perfect festival sets.

Give us the one that might go somewhere stupid.

AND THEN THERE’S UNDERWORLD

We could give you a clever reason.

There isn’t one.

Underworld is playing.

We’re going to Underworld.

Sometimes being a music snob means knowing when to shut the fuck up.

SO WHERE ARE WE STARTING?

Isotropic Stage on Friday.

That’s probably the most useful thing we can tell you.

We have other plans.

Floating Points is somewhere on the list.

Shanti and Peach are on the list.

Danny Daze and Godfather are on the list.

Purity Ring is floating around in there because apparently 2012 still has a small emotional lien on us.

But we’re starting at Isotropic.

After that, we’re leaving some holes in the schedule.

Because the whole point of going to III Points instead of watching everyone’s recorded sets later is that something is supposed to fuck up the plan.

Hopefully it does.