🌅 Sunrise set time in Miami
Miami music requires a plan, perseverance, psilocybin and fighting off pickpockets.
Even as electronic music becomes increasingly reliant on and enhanced by extraterrestrial visuals on a screen, there is no replacement for the gradual transition of a pitch black sky to a deep gradient of blues and indigo, and then onto pink and orange hues that a natural sunrise reveals. DJs hold that this early morning hours-long passage period heightens the emotional connection to their music, amplifying the sensory impact of the sound and fostering an unmatched intimacy with their fans. There is no continental city in the United States that provides this offering except Miami, whose favorable climate and sleepless party culture has fortified the sunrise set as a standard form of operation. It is not lost on me that I’ve only now, in mid-life, fully appreciated this ambiance — a time when regulating one’s body for such a dramatic time jolt requires true commitment and sacrifice. On the other hand, your 40s equip you with the foresight, discipline and appreciation that a true Miami music experience demands. On this particular night — the final of Art Basel — my designs are to see Adriatique, a Swiss duo in the midst of a breakthrough in the highly competitive space of deep house and melodic techno music. Their set time: 3:30 AM.
Hence, the time this post was delivered to you. 3:30 AM is not ideal. Even after appraising the magnified vibes and the unparalleled setting, if I’m honest, I prefer a set that begins around 11:30 PM and ends at 2 a.m., allowing enough time for an early dinner or drinks that naturally fit into the rhythm of a night out, along with space on the other end to decompress, whether that be over a late night taco or an “afters” debrief with friends on the couch to rehash the shared experience over ambient music. The 3:30 AM set time is a conundrum and a strain. To begin something — anything — at that hour feels foolish, juvenile, exhausting. In the shadows of my darkened hotel room on this morning, there’s a moment of doubt —a fleeting temptation to bag the entire endeavor altogether in favor of comfort and stasis. But with deep exhales, I remind myself the music is the medicine. Like the gym, getting there is the hardest part. The reason this set time is doable is the incorporation of a rest period. Dinner was strategically set at 7:30, in order to be back at the hotel in the 9 PM hour for an interval of decompression. The objective is to catch some sleep and the friend accompanying me does so, but the anticipation around the event prevents my body from relaxing. I toss and turn on the memory foam inside the Mondrian Hotel, fiddling with my phone, silently strategizing an arrival time. After a gin and tonic I settle on a departure time of just after 2 a.m. The UberX ride with Edna is bracingly quick: We hustle over the Biscayne Bay, hop a quick spurt onto I-95 north and into the northwest Miami suburbs to Factory Town, named after a mattress factory that supplied bedding during World War II. Now the 6.3-acre lot is an all-night playground for goons, ravers and freaks like me, whose happy place is the proximity to a beat.
I take two blocks of psilocybin mushroom chocolates as I exit the UberX and make my