Tiesto at Ultra 2012: the world’s greatest DJ at Miami’s biggest event

When we first saw the Main Stage of Ultra Music Festival we thought there was a pretty decent amount of room — but that certainly was not the case by the time Tiesto stepped in to close out day 1 at 10:30. The entire Ultra site was completely mobbed all day, but you could barely move amid the tens of thousands of people crowded around the gigantic LED-faced structure for the the legendary headliner. It didn’t stop Tiesto from kicking things off with his newest track, “Chasing Summers” — the light melody  and hard drop caught the crowd off guard, before switching it up with the mellow opening sequence of his remix to Coldplay’s “Paradise.”

Tiesto’s set was uncharacteristically hard, with lots of dubby edits and bootlegs that we could barely place. One we could, however, was “C’Mon,” which is one track desperately in need of a comeback. He also played a hard electro bootleg of “Feel So Close,” and a weird version of Avicii and Sebastien Drums’ “My Feelings For You.” Cedric Gervais’ “Have You Seen Molly?” was an interesting addition to the set, which he followed up with “Beautiful World.” He also played Tommy Trash’s remix of Steve Aoki and Wynter Gordon’s “Ladi Dadi” — ’nuff said. Other early highlights included R3hab and Swanky Tunes’ “Sending My Love,” and the venerable Axwell remix of “In My Mind.” Afrojack and Shermanology’s “Can’t Stop Me” got some new electro vibes with an unidentified remix, as did “We Found Love” — which may already be one of the most played tracks at this year’s UMF.

The highlight of the set had to be an incredible mashup of Sandro Silva and Quintino’s “Epic” with Knife Party’s “Internet Friends.” Tiesto shouted out his Dutch DJ friends as the first track was coming in, and caught us off guard when he pretended that his iPhone was ringing to go along with the whole bit. As if that wasn’t enough, he followed it up with a new track from Afrojack.

Things started winding down until we heard the “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” acapella, and were pleasantly surprised with how well it paired with Tiesto’s own “Maximal Crazy.” The crowd had been waiting for this song — which he actually followed up with the original mix of after the bootleg. He finally dropped a new track after that which the crowd seemed to be really into, but we don’t have many details on that. It all culminated in an unbelievable fireworks finale and thousands of people flooding the streets of Miami.

Not bad for the world’s greatest DJ, huh?

Jacob Schulman contributed to this report