Before the festival, there were the parties. And while there are great party towns, few can match Detroit’s. So when the official Paxahau “I’m on the Boat” party, held Sunday night, was announced shortly before the festival, it quickly became the “buzz” afterparty of the weekend.
Kenneth Thomas is one of the most successful DJs coming out of Detroit. He’s had a number one record on Beatport, has won Detroit DJ of the Year in the alternative weekly annual polls and is finishing an eagerly awaited artist album for Perfecto Records. But the only place you’ll find him in at Movement is in the audience. Because Kenneth Thomas doesn’t play techno. Or house. He plays progressive house and trance. And those are fighting words to the Detroit hardcore techno scene.
It’s eleven o’clock on a Saturday night in Detroit — do you know where your average hip hop-soaked, electro-lightning struck music fan is? Probably a cool 1,500 people deep in an eclectic crowd of Detroiters and international globetrotters, nodding their heads and moving their bodies to the intense bass-and-beat, multidimensional punch of the Glitch Mob on the Red Bull Music Academy stage at Movement ’09. From forcefully slapping recognizable, mainstream rap hooks across the face with various effects and hovering them above some of the crunchiest bass lines we’ve ever heard to the trio of electronic wonder boys working the crowd like seasoned rock stars, the Glitch Mob closed the Red Bull Music Academy Stage with not only laid back flare, but with flawless form and function to match. We managed to chase down the West Coast digital maestros — EdIT, Boreta and Ooah (missing in action — “hired gun” Kraddy) fresh after their atomic set; Ooah proudly marching over to the couch with a fifth of Jameson’s in hand and Z-Trip sitting off to the side, listening in. Oh, what a night…
Remember your first kiss? That sweetly awkward pounce in the shadows of the roller rink, timing your approach and nervously wiping your sweaty palms against your adolescent denim? It makes for fond memories and hilarious fodder — how your teeth accidentally slammed against each other’s, how you just couldn’t figure out where to put your hands. Believe it or not, all people go through this awesome awkwardness — even those super cool musicians you see on ten-foot high stages, covered in fog and professional lighting. But when you translate that romantic teenage fondling into, say, visiting and also performing in the United States for the very first time, you’ve got Krazy Baldhead — suitcases in tow — soaking up the sights of the country via Detroit, performing live on the Red Bull Music Academy stage and planting that first sloppy kiss with the land of fast food and big flag dreams.
If techno were a comic book, Ryan Elliott would be one of its superheroes. For the past ten years, he takes his daily run and heads to his day job in the finance department of Ford Motors. But once the sun comes down, he becomes one of America’s most popular young DJs, flying across the Atlantic or the heartland twice a month, to do what he loves.
After a high-energy, house-fueled two-hour set at the Red Bull Music Academy Stage at Movement on Saturday, Ryan [who, in the interest of disclosure, is also a friend] gave us the lowdown on what it’s really like to be a man with a double life. We began with one simple question: Since he’s no stranger to a good time and has become Luftansa’s new best friend, how the hell has he held onto his job with one of the big three?
Back in the early 1990s, The Prodigy, for better or worse, were thought by many to be the future of music. With songs and videos for “Firestarter” and “Smack My Bitch Up,” they were shocking, rude and controversial. Now, some 15 years later, they are back on the road, promoting a new album, Invaders Must Die, and sporting the original trio of Liam Howlett, Keith Flint and Maxim Reality for the first time since 1997. This time around, the stakes are high with nothing less at risk than their credibility.
In the beginning, there was only an unlikely pitch. What if Detroit, by 2000 already one of the most depressed, violent, financially challenged cities in the country, gave a free festival in Hart Plaza, the downtown river walk/concrete park, honoring techno music? What if Detroit were filled with people from all over the world on Memorial Day, having the time of their lives, raining serious coin on local merchants throughout the city?
Proving that truth is stranger than fiction, the city bought the idea. Thanks largely to a generous sponsorship package from Ford, which was introducing a new car, the Techno, DEMF (Detroit Electronic Music Festival) was green lit. And techno, which had been invented in Detroit, got its own festival — even though many of the people responsible for the decision had no idea what techno really was.
