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Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Dustin Downing, Additional photos by Joe Gall

For the past ten years, Detroit’s Movement festival has been notoriously fond of after parties. Whether they be of the renegade rave, abandoned factory sort or the most official, posh push-pop you can come by, the entire city becomes blanketed in non-stop nightlife until the sun comes up and the festival grounds once again reopen. Saturday was no exception as the Magic Stick (regularly voted in the top ten best venues in the country by Rolling Stone and Paste, home to the oldest bowling alley in the country) in Midtown Detroit welcomed nationally renowned electronic label Ghostly International’s 10-Year Anniversary to a packed house after tearing apart the Red Bull Music Academy stage earlier that day with the likes of The Sight Below, Lusine, Kate Simko and Ryan Elliott.

“It has been ten years of the festival, and it’s our ten-year anniversary,” points Sam Valenti, owner and founder of Ghostly International, hours before the showcase at the Stick backstage in the green room.  “It’s fun to run into friends that Ghostly has had for six, seven years all day at Movement.” And with Ghostly International Tycho by his side, it’s easy to see just what Valenti is getting at. “It’s exciting to be back where it all started over ten years ago,” adds Tycho. “To be right in the middle of it all…”
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It’s not like we love Neil Landstrumm — it’s like the man lives inside of our ear drums, pounding out his innovative, hybrid cocktail of dub and grime powered auditory awesomeness. His Sunday set at Movement ’09 was certainly no exception. Although the poor dude was set up to the side of the stage, he made up for his lack of strategic positioning that lives in the world kick snare, kick snare — but stands tall in an ocean of imitators who chase his sound but continually fall flat. When you’ve been it for as long as Landstrumm has, you’ll run it into that … but you’ll also learn how to run directly over it, reverse and repeat a few times until you stand adjacent to only your own legacy and a long line of DJ road kill. For what seemed like an eternity (but was probably closer to an hour if we settle down and face the facts), Landstrumm transformed his daytime set into a time bending performance that turned the audience into midnight marauders of the sexist sort, Landstrumm’s often space age slugtone beats unleashing some of the weirdest, most sensual dance moves we’ve seen in quite sometime.

Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Joe Gall

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A wise man once said, “The biggest crime when [Afrika] Bambaataa plays is not to dance.” Actually, King Kurmanji, the international spokesperson for the Zulu Nation and Bambaataa’s right hand man, said that a few hours before Bambaataa’s set on the Red Bull Music Academy stage on Monday afternoon in a hotel lobby when he was actually on the right hand side of Bambaataa, firmly planted in a rather comfy chair. “When you dance, you lose your stresses and your worries,” continues Kurmanji. “You wash that negativity away when you release it, breathe it and move that behind.” Heavy words that are certainly not to be taken lightly — just like the political persona that Bambaataa encompasses in his large frame, and just like the cameo-packed performance he brought to the stage. “We just don’t want any wallflowers,” coolly adds Bambaataa.

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Musicians carry a fraction of diva within their core. It is one of those unwritten laws that no matter how down to earth (or buried within) they may seem, there resides a chunk of entitlement in their bones that screams “gimme this” or “double wrap that.” As long as we don’t have to endure it constantly (read: be Kanye West’s personal assistant), it’s easy to push on the back burner and let it cook — considering it slightly, but never holding such pretenses against the artist. Busy P broke these rules on Monday evening when he slammed his designer headphones (and then his microphone) at the beginning of his set when something went wrong with the sound, and proceeded to scream in a mixture of French and English at the crowd and also at that poor, unfortunate sound guy (who seemed relatively unaffected by the whole ordeal).

Some of the crowd dissipated, heading back into the rest of the festival grounds, while others stayed to see if Busy P would smile and, you know, play a decent set. Considering Busy P’s past and present — manager of Daft Punk for over twelve years, currently resides of Ed Banger Records, which is home to Justice, DJ Mehdi and fellow Red Bull Music Academy performer Krazy Baldhead — it was no surprise that his temper did, in fact, cool and that his performance struck a highly stylized, electro-boutique chord with the mobs of Movement patrons who, in fact, returned.

What is electro-boutique, you ask? It’s an honest question, so take that guilty look off your face and quit sobbing into your cereal bowl. Electro-boutique is exactly what Busy P brought to the Red Bull Music Academy stage after his brief but brutal outburst of French emotion — a slick chrome variety of sexually charged, minimalist yet fierce beats that sample only the finest, most erotic records you’ve ever rubbed your lustful little fingers on. We’re talking about walking into a warehouse in that oh-so-historic (for the wrong reasons) district of your fine city, and having all those suspended strobe lights and spinning disco balls reflect bright flashes of light off of hundreds of shiny, androgynous black boots into your innocent, sparkling eyes. Like the crowd at Movement ’09, your slightly overwhelmed, but your body just keeps moving to the rhythm and your libido is consistently rising at pulsating rates you’ve never quite felt before. You kind of like this place, don’t you? The crowd straddling the stage sure did, too … especially with the heavy dose of Justice-meets-Daft Punk (appropriate reference, right?) nitty, gritty hunks of heaping bass Busy P threw into the equation for the ultimate money shot effect.

In our humble opinion, Busy P’s set came to a close a little soon (although he technically played over). As soon as we were about to hit climax, our nasty little daydream (and the daydreams of hundreds of others) snapped back into reality and Busy P was heading off with Krazy Baldhead in tow to grab his check and the next flight back to Europe. A bit of a diva? You just can’t argue the facts. An international DJ with the credentials and steamy, sexual live show to match? Like we said, you just can’t argue the facts.

Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Joe Gall

 

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As the sun shined through the massive square windows of a downtown Detroit hotel on Memorial Day, Grant Davis, aka VJ Culture,  is picking his way through a “delicious” vegetarian meatloaf. In the true nature of his role as one of the most sought after video jockeys in the game, he is quick to use nutritional visuals to describe (somewhat abstractly) how his job works. “The broccoli connects the wires to the meatloaf, which is the screen,” laughs Davis, “and here is me” — pointing to the mashed potatoes with his fork — “feeling a little mashed after last night.”

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Anyone who loves techno owes Kevin Saunderson for three things: co-inventing techno, coming up with the anthems, Big Fun and The Good Life, and being the unsung hero of Movement, stepping in at considerable cost to save the festival when its future was bleak.

The year was 2004, and the festival, which had been free to the public for the first four years, was in deep trouble. The city approached Saunderson, a well-liked presence in the Detroit community, and begged him to come in and take charge. “I had never run a festival before, but I knew how much time it would take to do it  right. So I agreed on the condition that they officially back the festival by September,” he says.

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