When we crawled off the airplane back in LGA the closing night of the UMF was still going strong. It was a hard weekend, but after four other over-night festivals in Miami we were about as prepared as could be. The ninth installment of the Ultra Music Festival was the biggest yet and if the organizers are to top this party they will have to work hard.

A large crowd gathered despite intermittent rain affecting the event. The upside was that thanks to the moisture there was nowhere near as much dust in the air created by the dancing public. Regardless, nightreveler got in just as Brazilian Girls were finishing their set before a modest crowd. After wandering around the park for a bit Miss Kittin drew our attention back to the main stage. She was hot in the middle of her mix when the sound guys cut her off. Needless to say she was not thrilled. That"s part of the problem with the huge music festivals, the set times for each artist are rather short, Miss Kittin was only scheduled for 45 min. No matter, after cheering her on we spent some time listening to Deep Dish controlling the party at the "onbeat" stage. They dropped some favorites like "PATT" and "Proper Education." Their performance was followed by Boys Noize with a good selection of heavy breaky beats and electro mixes including Daft Punk's "Technologic."

After that we heard Digitalism, Fedde le Grand, Tiësto and Sander Kleinenberg. We really liked the Digitalism stuff, though it"s hard to pin down their exact style is somewhere between breaks and hard house, we'll be actively tracking their events from now on. Fedde le Grand came on the main stage late, after several Cure encores. He did a good job, but the set was very short, we're not sure he even got the 30 minutes he was scheduled for. The one thing we definitely did not enjoy was the host, it"s one thing to get the people energized, it"s another to be randomly cursing. By then the crowd was enormous, even though the event was in a park, on a large open lawn, there was barely any room to stand, let alone dance. Tiesto came on in front of a crowd chanting his name. he did his usual thing, but after "Flight 643," nightreveler headed off to see Sander"s set instead. What we found was a much friendlier and mature crowd, there was room to dance and the track selection was more to our liking. Oddly, both Tiesto and Kleinenberg played remixes of "Smack my Bitch up," we also heard "Sweet Dreams" several times but from different DJs.

Unfortunately it was all over at midnight on the dot, but the music continues on Saturday. Check back soon.