The electronic music scene has been around long enough that there are scenes within it. There’s the kid sitting in his bedroom staring at a screen in a nest of wires. There’s the dark DIY warehouse in the sketchy part of town with booming beats and screeching synths bleeding through the walls. Then there’s the big time.

There are six outdoor stages at Ultra Music Festival,and the  DJs are huge. I’m talking like ubiquitous trance beats, heard-it-in-a-car-commercial huge. I mean, Carl Cox has his own fricking stage.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s not an absolutely ridiculous party. While the super-nerdy, underground abstract beatmakers of the world were couped up in their parents’ basements, Moby, Deadmau5, CSS,The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, and Armin Van Buren were rocking crowds of thousands with the assistance of very large speakers.