To us, the Miami Winter Music Conference has always been about hanging out with friends in the sun rather than going to fancy parties full of cool people. For five years in a row at WMC, we’ve hung out with our Australian super best friends Infusion, did our gigs and went to parties that almost always sucked. After spending most of our nights going from party to party, queuing and dealing with heavy handed Miami club security, we’d usually give up and go somewhere full of healthy looking and well slept people to do more drugs and drink cocktails until we dropped—or got kicked out.

Around three years ago, we decided to have a few years break from WMC. We were completely over it, as our last visit almost killed us. At the time, we were in the middle of a North American tour: we dropped in on Miami, did two gigs in the daytime, then flew off to Toronto with Juice Aleem where it was around minus 10 degrees, did a gig there, and then flew back to Miami without sleeping to do another two gigs with Juice that same day/night. (Ouch!)

That evening we ended up in a posh penthouse party with Adam Freeland and friends, along with hundreds of horrible-looking, coked-up, aging models with melting plastic faces and tits. I decided it would be a great idea if we climbed from balcony to balcony (on the 10th floor, with a massive drop between each) with a powder fire extinguisher, which we decided to fire through the open doors of guests’ rooms. Sounds fun, right? But how the fuck do you get back to the party without getting beaten up by all the people that now hate you for setting off a fire extinguisher in their room? You try and climb down the ladder that goes all the way down the side of the building whilst on ecstasy, that’s how. Bedtime!!!

Anyway, this year, after our brief hiatus, we swore things were going to be different. I awoke from a sensible first night’s sleep ready for an afternoon of pool parties, only to find it was kinda cold and raining hard. Regardless, I dragged myself out of bed to meet the others (no Infusion this year) for an unhealthy breakfast of beef burgers and root beer; the next thing I knew, it was time for us to leave for Ultra, our only gig of WMC 2010 (Ultra is pretty much the only decent paying gig you can get in Miami, so we naturally said “Yes, please!” to the offer to play). We made our way to the stage through a sea of Dayglow ravers —we were the second act on that day, following the more than excellent Boy 8-Bit. The crowd was pretty small at first, but after three or four tracks the place was absolutely packed and rocking. Dayglow or not, those people know how to have a good time!

Once we were done with our gig, we had two choices. Option A: Watch our BFFs Alex Metric and Adam Freeland play their sets, or B: totally bail out on them and get some early evening sleep before a fun-filled evening. We went for option B. After a kip, we made our way to Jerry’s Diner for some dinner, then headed to our management company’s party to meet some friends—and then I don’t really remember much of the next five hours. I know we went to Annie Mac’s party briefly, then ended up at Space (an awful fucking commercial hell hole). At Space, we decided ‘beak’ is the best name for cocaine ever, and began incorporating the word into movie titles. Here are some examples: Beakless in Seattle, Twin Beaks, Beak Street, Dante’s Beak, Unbeak My Heart, Point Beak & Dr. Beak (Topical).

Around maybe 6am, we were on our way back to the hotel for some sleep when I got a call from our manager saying he was upstairs hanging with a big English pop star whose name I’ll refrain from using and that we should come up and party. Everyone else went to bed but Alex Metric and I decided to go up. Seven hours later, we found ourselves back in Jerry’s Diner (who serve cocktails 24 hours a day) with the aforementioned pop star, dreaming up the tabloid newspaper headlines to go along with her antics entertaining Miami’s finest by running into shops trying to steal sequined-covered clothes for me to wear. Bedtime!

I “woke up” later that evening, having missed the only sunny day of our three days at the conference. Once awake, I met up with Alex Metric, my Evil Nine partner Tom and his lady to try and eat some food before we went to a private party Metric was playing at. We were supposed to meet up with a big group of friends at Joe’s Stone Crab, but the thought of crab and a big group of people I’d have to talk to just made me want to puke. We went for Thai instead but that didn’t go down too well, either; we just sat there staring at our plates, trying to drink cocktails.

Temporarily, we got back in action once we arrived at the private party. Double beak!! Naomi Campbell was there…. Wow!!! The booze was free and Alex’s set was dope (he played a slow disco early set), but otherwise the party was pretty lame and full of twats; therefore, as soon we got appropriately shitfaced, we left to meet up with friends at the Mad Decent/Fools Gold party. The music sounded great as we hung in the queue, watching lots of good-looking kids walking out complaining about the fire marshals inside closing the party down. Once again, we were left with two choices—A: Go to bed, because we have a morning flight back to the U.K., or B: Go to P. Diddy’s party at his house that starts at 5am, to which we’d been invited. We went for option A, spending most of the next day at the airport reading everybody’s tweets saying how mad the party was at Diddy’s… About twenty hours later, I’m standing at my front door in Brighton, realizing that I’ve left my keys elsewhere and I cant get in to my flat or my bed—a fitting end to a hilariously typical Winter Music Conference. Bedtime!

Q: You guys just arrived back from WMC in Miami. How was it this time?

It was very special this time. We had huuuge problems on the whole organisation front, but we managed to do it at the end. We had our Rooftop Party on Thursday which was beautiful and one of the best locations for sure, but we only had 5 hours until the Police shut us down. right when Damian Lazarus started his Live Show. We played the BBC 1 party, Pete Tong was a great host as always, so this was fun. And then we had our party at Studio K on Saturday with Italoboyz, BronnT, Audiofly, Matthew Dear and us. We only had 9 days to promote the Party, but luckily all went well and we had a blast.

Q: Miami is also great fun, pool parties, loads of girls . Tell us something funny happened there

Don’t know where to start. Everything was so stressful, but in general you can say the whole WMC is very funny. Tiefschwarz, Patrick and me were booked on the Ultra Festival and we thought we get a proper set up for each of us. At the end we had to share one set up with 4 people which was kind of funny. And we only had one hour, so each of us could play 2,5 cds which looked pretty rediculous i’m sure…

Q: Is there a special musical trend coming, a special sound maybe?

Nothing new in my perception. Nothing i haven’t heard before. But of course you can say it gets more and more house-ier. Away from super minimal tracks to a more melodic and percussion orientated songs, which i like more.

Q: WMC is a classic event in the DJ Schedule. What does classic means to you in general?

Classic is something that exists for more than a short period, that got some value and is lasting for a long time. The opposite of a hype i’d say.

Q: Who are your favorite DJ´S /producers currently and what kind of Sports do you imagine they are doing?

This changes quite a bit over the years. But i know from experience that not a lot of DJ´S do any kind of sports as djing is a mega endurance sport already. I saw Carl Cox last Sunday and he played funk, soul and r&b. it was fantastic!!!! Super nice! Very surprising and everybody was laughing and dancing. Very communicative. Like in the old days. I could imagine him in a boxing ring for instance!

Q:  Which Sports do you like and does Sports inspire you sometimes?

My Partner and myself got to know each other doing sports. On a tennis court. The  only thing we did was sports when we were young. In Summer, we were every single day on the tennis court, and in winter squash. We went snowboarding and skiing whenever there was a chance, i played golf in a Team. Now, i’m more into running. When running for an hour, you achieve this steady state where you are able to release a lot of stress and it gives you a lot of power back…

Q: What can we expect from M.A.N.D.Y. in the Future?
We are more in the studio again. Finished a couples of remixes, playing our first live festival season… So, lots of work and still lots of fun!!!

Thank you Philipp ! Check out their MySpace !