DJ Mag March 2020 (UK) - digital

FAIL WE MAY, SAIL WE MUST 

It’s Miami time again, when tens of thousands of industry bods and dance music fans descend upon the Florida city for a week’s worth of parties, panels, networking, and fun in the sun. With the Winter Music Conference (WMC) being rebooted after acquisition by Ultra and more European DJs and labels recognising Miami Music Week (MMW)’s relevance again, it feels like Miami is firmly back on the map. 

DJ Mag will be in Miami again, of course, hosting our pool party on Wednesday 18th March at the Surfcomber in South Beach, and soaking up the week’s frenzied activity. In the Miami section of this mag (beginning on page 29) we profile the top-notch artists playing our pool party event, run down all the other main parties, and look at the history of WMC. I was in Miami recently to interview Duck Sauce for the cover story — a somewhat surreal experience full of duck-related tomfoolery (page 30) — and can’t wait to return this month. 

There’s tonnes of other good stuff in this issue too, but shortly before going to press, news came through about the tragic passing of Andrew Weatherall (page 12). It’s hard to quantify the enormous influence this acid house pioneer had on a certain generation of DJs and clubbers; suff ice to say that it feels like we’ve lost our John Peel, our Joe Strummer. As the outpourings of grief on social media have shown, Andrew touched very many people in all manner of ways. Not just in the UK either. 

It feels like one of our scene’s foundational pillars has been taken from us way too soon, like a major part of the true pioneering spirit of acid house has been untimely ripped from us. His determination to flip the script and plough his own furrow made him so incredibly influential, and he leaves an amazing legacy of music — so many out-there DJ sets, outstanding dubwise remixes, collaborative tracks. He always had time for ordinary people too, and during one friendly encounter with a young fisherman in County Cork, Andrew asked him: “Are there times when you get up in the morning and you can’t be arsed?” What the trawlerman replied became somewhat of a mantra for the driven, prolif ic, workaholic Andrew (he even got it tattooed on his arms and made it into a song): “Fail we may, sail we must.” 

Farewell Lord Sabre, rest in power. 

CARL LOBEN 

Editor