Much like the city that spawned the Techno revolution, Detroit’s Movement festival is often overlooked by the upper echelons of the DJ circuit. Stranded out in middle America without the direct European connections of MUTEK, or even New York’s lively underground, the audience often forgets that Detroit hustles harder, and for whatever it lacks in chin-scratching, haut-couture allure, the city makes up for in pure soul and feeling. Thus, every year on the weekend of Memorial Day, party-goers young, old, novice, and seasoned alike, descend upon the Motor City, some unsuspectingly and others knowingly, for a grass roots blowout that perennially exceeds all reasonable expectations. Movement serves as a reconvening of the giants who invented the music that now spans the globe, and on this occasion the city and its finest sons step up their game even higher, regularly delivering awe-inspiring performances that raise the entire emotional level of the festival into something unobtainable at a more commercial event. Whether it’s the bus driver, the bellhop, or the barman, the entire city is abuzz with a celebration of the music that came from there, and with tens of thousands of travelers in town especially for the occasion, the clubs, bars, theaters and stages of the city come alive in a unison four-four beat. With our experienced ears on the lookout for the freshest and most vital sounds Motown has to offer, halcyon took on Movement this year for yet another memory-making edition of one of our favorite festivals…
Detroit Day Zero:
Getting off to a proper Techno start, I arrived in Detroit on zero hours sleep after a night with Chris Liebing at Cielo and a nonstop rush to arrive in time at LaGuardia. After a long bus ride through some of the more bombed out areas of the city, I finally arrived at my hotel downtown around 1PM to grey skies and cool temperatures. Taking a break to catch up on internet needs and find friends that were already in town, I then embarked on a solo walking tour of downtown Motown. Detroit’s not an ugly city at all: there’s amazing Art Deco buildings everywhere and old skyscrapers that easily rival the best New York has to offer, but half of them are still abandoned and only the facades have been face-lifted to cover up continuing decay. There’s even the Opera House that has been turned into a parking garage with the elaborate décor and fixtures left intact; they simply added floors and ramps and that was all. Now there’s lots of new development too, and year by year the city returns ever so slightly from the brink. It’s important to remember that Detroit was once the “Paris of the Midwest” and had a music and arts scene that completely changed the world in the second half of last century; Techno is only the most recent part of that legacy. After grabbing a six of Bell’s, the best local nectar, I took a short break in the park and made my way to TV Bar for the beginning of the Beretta Music party.
Arriving about two hours after the scheduled start time for the party, I find a small but dedicated cadre of Techno heads outside on the patio chatting, enjoying free barbeque, and getting into some quite good music from a totally unknown DJ – not at all a rare 
occurrence in Detroit. Since Spirit Airlines doesn’t even feed you peanuts, I immediately sprung for a burger, and after settling down behind the booth I took another short pause. On the way up to the venue I’d noticed a solitary crane knocking down a gigantic old building blow-by-blow in a show of desolate brutality that was almost poetic; in New York they’d have taken 3 days to set the charges and 3 minutes to eliminate the building, but here it takes months and puts on a show for anyone curious enough to watch. In the slowly filling garden, this was quickly taken as a topic of conversation, and in the intervening hours I learned all about the history of the building, the racial and political history of the city, and about many other things only locals could know. It was getting late however, and as my phone started to perk up I made my way back to the hotel for a breather.
After regrouping with friends, we made an abortive attempt to go see Rick Wilhite and Norm Talley at a club, but as the venue had moved to outside of downtown and completely in the wrong direction, we ended up back at TV Bar earlier than expected to find a very healthy party. By now most of the New York representation had filtered in the door, and we took some time to catch up and settle in for what was going to be a long night. Punisher and Sassmouth were going head to head on the patio, and these two girls definitely know how to rock a party. The crowd didn’t need much convincing either – everyone was here for one thing, and the continued destruction of the neighboring building took a backseat to dancing, socializing, and social lubrication. After the patio was suddenly shut down to avoid attracting the attention of the local authorities, we tumbled inside to find Akufen controlling the Red Room with an all-vinyl set of matchless, smooth mixing and sultry, emotional Deep House. The crowd was loving it and the room was packed, and as well as I know Akufen I still stayed to listen for a good hour before the rumors of the upstairs reached us. Beretta Music is Luke Hess’ crew and really that tells you everything you need to know – expect dopeness, deep and dubby…. expectations that were more than met. When we wandered in, Brian Kage was teaming off with a DJ I didn’t recognize with Luke standing by, and they were running the floor without mercy or pause with burning Detroit Techno and dubbier sounds that hit all the right marks. It could have gone on and on, but the one-two punch of Roman Flugel and Round Two finished things off with style and sent everyone home tired, but with with legs left to tackle the not-yet-started festival.
Movement Day One:
Today is the proper start of the festival, so we made our way down to collect our passes and settle in around 2:30 in the afternoon. The overcast has let up ever-so-slightly, and we took a few moments to orient ourselves and figure out our Day 1 itinerary. Even familiar festivals are always confusing when you first walk in with the massive crowds and many stages, and the shifting of the Made in Detroit stage from the downstairs to the side of the main stage threw me off as I searched for the first box to tick. I ended up steering well though – Jonah Sharp was on as Space Time Continuum in just a few minutes, and after collecting refreshments in the press booth I arrived just in time to see him set things off. He had a whole stage full of hardware that I couldn’t see well enough to make out, and as he moved from Ambient into highly experimental Electro and then to slamming dubby Techno, the crowd moved with him making a smooth transition from sparse hazy beginnings to definitely up-for-it dancing. I was energized too, and I noticed the festival buzz building already. 
I didn’t need to go far for the next set because Cio D’Or was setting up next to Sharp on the same stage. Again, the material that began her set looked towards darker, more experimental areas with heavy breakbeats and lots of atmosphere, but after about 40 minutes she had built it up and was clearly having a great time dropping deep and slamming Techno that definitely owned the crowd. It continued until… the first major technical meltdown of the the festival. Out of nowhere Cio’s decks began skipping uncontrollably, and when they finally turned the lights on to fix the problem I made an exit with much of the rest of the crowd making a beeline to catch the rest of Aril Brikha’s set at the Made in Detroit stage. In spite of rain that packed people under the roof of the tent so densely that dancing became impossible, Aril kicked out the jams in his inimitable fashion. I consider myself a huge fan of his productions – they nail a building, emotional and melodic feeling with a dancefloor drive and funk that will destroy pretty much any crowd. It’s not something that everyone understands all of the time, but today Brikha played the best I’d ever seen him play.
Although the following set from Visionquest got off to a decent start and there were many other tempting names for the next interlude, the rain had killed my buzz and I decided to take a quick breather at my hotel to grab some food and dry off a bit. Returning about an hour later freshly fed and caffeinated, I passed by Kerri Chandler’s set at the Main Stage for about 15 minutes and was very pleased with what I heard there. Chandler often gets forgotten in the grand scheme of things in spite of his deservedly legendary reputation in the Jersey House scene, and tonight he’d brought everything up-to-date and was dropping slamming dubby House that had the big stage crowd jumping. If there was one name for the evening line up that had caught my attention, it was Goldie. It was more than 10 years ago in the UK clubs that I set upon the strange journey that lead to me to this moment, and having never seen the legendary Rude Boy before, I considered it my duty to go check out some of his set. It turned out to be a struggle to get there - the entire area was seething with ravers too young to possibly remember Timeless, and as I fought my way back to the press area I just missed a hilarious moment. Goldie had been on for half an hour already dropping his Metalheadz-ready Jungle, and with his manager and crew getting rowdy on the side of the stage he couldn’t hear them pleading for a rewind. Enter a photographer friend of halcyon… using her Stage Pass, she ran up directly behind him and pulled on his shirt tail to grab his attention and let him know what his people wanted. Request granted, and the crowd erupted… the rest of his set was similarly entertaining, pausing for a long moment to drop Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit before going back to the breaks briefly and winding down. Again I found myself forced to fight my way out, and reversing some previous misinformation I now had a confirmed Monolake sighting onstage and settled in to enjoy the rest of his set. He was doing the audiovisual team performance he’s been into for some time now, and the projected graphics were very impressive looking on the downstairs stage. Musically, Monolake is always a bit unpredictable, and he went through 140bpm breaks, Techno, ambient portions, and even a bit of Drum and Bass in the half hour I was able to see. His complete mastery of Ableton always comes through however, and by the time he finished I had my hands in the air and was hoping for more. With just 20 minutes left for the night at the festival site, there was only time to round up a few friends, and again I took a short break to sort out my dying phone.
Next up was the CLR party at the Elysium Lounge in Downtown Detroit. Walking in we were greeted by the nicest club I’d yet seen in Detroit and a crazy sound system that I later found out had been imported by the festival promoters for the weekend. It was just huge – 2 massive banana-shaped suspended arrays, then 20-foot high stacks of sub-woofers on each side and then still the main stacks next to the DJ booth. The club was huge too, evidently a converted bank or temple or something like that, with two floors, massive columns, a gigantic, ancient chandelier, an upstairs lounge area, and of course many other details that were impossible to see in the oppressively dark atmosphere or on account of the enormous crowd that had turned up. With Drumcell and Chris Liebing and Speedy J’s Collabs project on the main stage, there wasn’t much doubt as to what the music would be. I spent the period during Drumcell’s set exploring the various areas in the club and taking a brief tumble down the stairs into the basement to be greeted by Radioslave and Marcel Dettmann doing a tag team in the dingy rave cave, but I didn’t stick around long enough to really get into it… later. Back upstairs, Liebing and Paap had ascended the podium, and things had become even darker, nastier, and harder. Every kick was loud enough that it seemed ready to bring down the roof of the club, and with four per bar and a physically brutalizing wall of sound, it didn’t take the duo long to convince the crowd of their mission. Paap has always been one of the few artists capable of pulling off banging hard Techno with flair and style while still managing to keep it unpredictable and deep. Every time he cracked a sly grin it was time to brace yourself and expect some serious damage. The duo was briefly joined by Rachmad onstage – not entirely shocking I must say – and I made it through the meat grinder for about another hour before getting dragged downstairs for more punishment from Radioslave and Dettmann. By this time they’d built a very healthy head of steam themselves and buddy Ben Klock had stopped by to hang out… they were mixing on 3 CDJs and a little sampler Marcel had brought, and truly it’s a treat to see two DJs of such huge stature share a tiny booth in such tight confines. Radioslave would mix in an acapella or something unrelated on the 3rd deck, and using his sampler, Dettmann proceeded to twist it somehow into raw and rugged Techno almost every time. That’s not to say it was predictable… it was anything but. By the end of their set they’d made brief visitations into New Wave, Electro, Soul, House, and just about everything else, and the crowd was totally seduced. By the time this wound down way past 4AM, there was nowhere to go but back to the hotel. My phone was dead, and I was exhausted from a 16-hour day with two more yet to go. The beast had not yet been tamed, get ready for Day 2…
Movement Day Two:
Making it back before it got too late was a wise move… by noon I was fed, showered, and ready to tackle another day of madness, Motown style. Meeting up with the rest of the halcyon crew in the lobby of the Marriot Courtyard, we ran into Monolake and Cio D’Or for a brief chat before he got back on the plane for his next destination. The early afternoon agenda was to take a tour of the few remaining record shops in the metro area. The target list consisted of the justifiably famous Detroit Threads, and, on an insider tip courtesy of Seth Troxler, the slightly farther-flung Melodies and Memories. Threads is located in Hamtramck, a historically Polish enclave that still shows strong signs of its heritage, and as we walked in we were immediately steeped in the atmosphere that makes the Motor City such a special place. We were greeted by a healthy crowd, a hot breakfast buffet, a House DJ, Michelle Weeks singing live over her new Aaron Carl (RIP) produced track, and a brief encounter with the always affable young Kyle Hall and his girlfriend. If felt like home.The shop was crammed with all manner of merchandise and memorabilia… T-shirts from famous Detroit labels and locations, shoes, hats, jackets, and of course thousands and thousands of records in every imaginable genre, some of which none of us had seen for many years. It’s clear that there’s an intimidating amount of history here – even the signs pointing punters to the various sections were made of famous vinyl, now hopelessly misused of course. I noticed one sign had been made from Model 500′s Off to Battle, a record I remember paying a decent price for in Montreal, and an unassailable classic no matter what tag is on it. They weren’t stocking just the classics though… the new records were acutely chosen (by the previously mentioned Punisher, who is the buyer) as well, and none of us made it out without racking up a few choice finds. Already running late, we did a brief interview with the proprietor of 14 years before flagging another cab and making the trek to Eastpointe.
Passing the abandoned Packard plant on the way there gave us a brief taste of what we would get much more of later… if downtown Detroit has been somewhat revived, huge areas of the city are still almost beyond hope, and the gigantic Packard Motors plant, a former location for illegal squat Techno parties, serves as a vivid signpost for the problems that still plague the city. Eastpointe itself is rather suburban and pleasant though, and as we rolled up in front of Melodies and Memories we admired the life-size drawings of famous Motown artists and blown-up Motown record labels. Walking inside, there were four simultaneous clunks as our jaws all hit the floor at the same time. The place was massive… I can’t think of many comparisons myself. Amoeba in LA is much bigger but also more spacious, but this place was cramped and crammed – completely flooded with records: new, old, unknown, famous, and of every conceivable shape, size, and make. Every square inch of this place was covered with music, film and TV-related merch, a veritable museum of posters, magazines, toys and collectibles. There was even a whole room devoted to kitschy lunch boxes, shelves and shelves of them from ceiling to floor, some of them 50 years old, and life-size cardboard cutouts, mostly of superheroes and Motown stars, placed side-by-side as if they inhabited the same universe. Record-wise, the place was a treasure trove for any digger looking for anything obscure or left field. They clearly weren’t putting in as much effort in keeping it up-to-date as Detroit Threads was, but there was still a well-stocked House and Techno section that boasted plenty of gems as well as tens of thousands of other records we hardly even had time to dig into in our visit. Again we briefly chatted with the management on the record, so to speak, but with Echospace taking the stage as we said our goodbyes and a long ride to downtown, we were forced to take our leave of this wondrous find, vowing to return next year.
The ride down Gratiot Avenue into downtown Detroit that followed would prove to be a shocking reality-check. After a short time cruising, abandoned houses began appearing in ever-increasing numbers on all sides of the road, and after a point it wasn’t simply houses but entire streets of houses literally falling down, with huge chunks missing, alongside abandoned businesses, even a 1920s vintage public library with the sign still in front, churches… a total ghost town, and it went on for miles in all directions. It was even worse for what had been given up for lost. In many cases the structures were actually beautiful and well constructed buildings, but decades of decay leaves only stone temples standing. A somber start to another full day of musical and other excesses… and eventually the conversation tapered off and we rolled to a stop across from Hart Plaza.
Echospace had only half of their set time left, and I took off at a trot to make it to the downstairs stage in time to catch a portion if it. I was greeted by finding the duo deep in a groove with Modell on his laptop and Hitchell piloting a strange collection of black boxes that notably included a Roland tape delay unit (big surprise!). The hazy, dubby, and melodic vibe of the Echospace experience has never leant itself much to talking about it, and it’s one of those you-get-it or you-don’t things that finds strong support and strong detractors. I’ve always been “with the program,” so for me the 20 minutes I caught was in fact something I’d been waiting years to see. It was also a nice slow ease-in to the next set by Adam X as Traversable Wormhole, which certainly would have been harder to take without a lead-in. Adam doesn’t take the corners slow at all, and if his recent output as TW shows the influence of modern Techno, the man had no small part in creating that sound so everything is as it should be. He’s got a deep connection and history in Detroit, and he clearly was in his element as he lashed the floor with uptempo breakbeats before leading into steadier, heavier, nastier Techno in the second half of his set. Ryan Elliott was up next down here, but after hours of living in the downstairs cave like a vampire and having recently witnessed his fitness at Bunker, I moved out into the sun for a bit of Margaret Dygas’ set. Again, the rain threatened, but this time it never turned into anything and Margaret took control of the rapidly growing crowd to prepare them for the highly anticipated set by “secret artist”, aka Ricardo Villalobos. It wasn’t much of a secret by then… I spotted him cavorting backstage with Loco Dice and friends before, and as the inimitable Chilean took his place beside Margaret onstage, I braced myself for what could easily be the highlight of the entire festival. He was obviously in a playful mood, but sound problems took the wind out of his sails early on and after sitting through 90 minutes of the alotted 120, I made the call that Ricardo wasn’t blowing any minds today… I’d seen him turn clubs inside out in Montreal, and it’s not a vague line. He can easily play some of the most twisted jams of anyone out there, but it doesn’t always take off and today it didn’t for whatever reason. My next move was downstairs to see Steve Rachmad bang out some more of the hard stuff, and the Dutch legend dependably didn’t disappoint. Ben Klock was going on next but my stomach was complaining loudly, and I regretfully walked through the gates to catch a sandwich and a cold drink nearby before the final act of the night.
An hour later I was back, and although Gaslamp Killer, Klock, Aux 88, and a 10:30 start time for Dettmann all proved tempting, the Main Stage closing act of Carl Craig as 69 was the only place to be in my book. Rather than run around the festival and miss everything I wanted to see, I pushed my way to the middle of the stairs at the Main Stage to catch the last 45 minutes of Sven Väth’s set, something I’d regretfully missed in New York. I’m not going to say Väth is my bag… I think I don’t really get it. When big room Techno goes that big it loses some of the feeling and emotional context and becomes too much about boom-boom for me. That said, I can appreciate the guy’s personality, and it was quite funny to watch him dance around onstage holding records in the air and clearly having a great time as thousands of people jumped around and some kids directly behind us held the “Gude Laune” banner up in the air. It was all starting to wear thin on me by the end, and for me choosing between him and Carl Craig isn’t a tough one at all… I was ready for the return of 69. I’d seen his setup from behind when I circled the stage through the VIP area, and it looked like he was behind the controls of a spaceship – 2 Novation Launchpads, a huge workstation keyboard, more MIDI controllers, an MPC, at least one computer, and an entire rack of modules that were way too far away from me to name check. He hadn’t touched this project in 15 years, and it was always his nastiest, dirtiest, and rawest material, so I knew we were in for a treat. He took the stage in an opera mask and white suit, and from the first bar the difference was immediately noticeable. Carl Craig can be obsessively clean sometimes, but here everything was dirty and huge, and he hadn’t lost his careful control of every element… he’d just subsumed it and applied it to a different, rawer toolkit. It just kept building and building with rare moments of release, and towards the end when he used his own processed vocals and live cymbals and hi-hats before dropping a gargantuan breakbeat completely out of nowhere, it was clear the master musician was at the top of his craft. The best live set I’d ever seen from Carl Craig… not a bad way to end day 2 of the Detroit festival.
It would unfortunately prove to be the end of the day however, because as I regrouped with friends at the Doubletree and we made our way over to the Bunker to see Cheap and Deep and the entire New York posse, we found our way blocked by Detroit’s Finest who had shut the party down. I checked to see if there was an inside tip as to a new location, but no love was found, and instead of a raging party on our hands it was back to the Doubletree for a regrouping session that ended inconclusively. Many people left to go to the SHXTSHOW at TV Bar, but I knew that the first 45 minutes of a 24 hour party were the wrong time to be there, so I went back to my hotel to ponder possibilities and wait for Adultnapper’s set at the Get Physical party, just around the corner from my lodgings. It would be a longer wait than expected…
Day 3:
Sometimes going to the hotel is a bad idea… rather than seeing Adultnapper around the corner I ended up falling asleep and waking up just in time for the party to be over. Arriving, coffee in hand, to find Adultnapper headed back to his hotel, I joined a small crew of NYC compadres and with a sly and slightly evil grin we hailed a cab and headed north to Old Miami for the annual Memorial Day ceremony and all-day blow-out. Old Miami is a veteran’s bar and it’s immediately obvious when you walk in… there’s loads of service badges and unit flags decorating the bar area and there’s even an unexploded bomb out back used as a bench by tired party-goers. Much like the war, the crowd in back was already in various states of carnage. Most hadn’t slept at all, or very little, but by 10AM the party was properly packed and raging nonetheless. I’ll be no authority on everyone who played throughout the day, but I know there was a live set by Sergio and Benoit, a slamming DJ set by Vincent Lemieux from Montreal, another live set by Clockwork, and as I was leaving, a sick tag team from Ryan Elliott and Craig Richards… in the middle there things definitely got a bit hazy, but that’s only understandable given we’d cracked our first cold ones at 8:30AM. It’s safe to say the entire New York crew made an appearance at one time or another, and many good times were had at this annual event which serves as Monday’s primary off-festival shindig. Around 4PM the veterans filed in accompanied by about 5 Windsor Ontario fire men in full uniform, and, as is the traditional at Old Miami, they took a brief moment to wind down the decks, make a speech, fire a salute with their rifles, and enjoy a drink afterwards with the well-lubricated party people. By 5:30PM I’d dried out enough to be decent and the blazing, 90-degree sun was starting to get to me. With Luke Hess and Brian Kage hitting the Main Stage as Reference in an hour, there wasn’t time to spare and I made abrupt goodbyes.
By the time I arrived I was glad to be out of the somewhat close and definitely dirty confines of Old Miami and onto some more proper action at the stages. It was still uncomfortably hot, but the big roof of the Main Stage cast a shadow long enough to get under. There we were treated to an hour and a half of truly sublime and spellbinding Techno with forays into dub, slamming Detroit styles, and even a scientifically precise use of Show Me Love, surgically engineered to turn the rapidly coalescing main stage crowd into rubber, just as it started to get packed. Hess and Kage may still be underground cats, but with their second performance in four days being nearly as good at the first, people would be well advised to consider why they were booked on the big stage… these two know what’s up. I couldn’t abide by Dubfire, so we took the trek back to the Red Bull Stage to see Scuba throw down, and although he was visibly having trouble with the sun in his face and perhaps a few other difficulties related to festival day three, I was pleased with his performance. Apart from another technical meltdown that briefly stopped his set, he devoted about half the time to Techno and actually got into some Dubstep towards the end… I hadn’t seen him actually play Dubstep for years, so it was nice and unexpected to see him getting into that with the flair expected of such an influential operator.
What was unexpected was that for the rest of the day the lineup would be so thin… ordinarily the Main Stage in Detroit on the final day is simply back to back performances from all of the local greats and reason enough to shimmy over there for some proper Motown sound, but this year the penultimate set by Green Velvet was only mildly tempting, and I didn’t want to get anywhere near Fatboy Slim’s closing set. Left with only the side stages to finish what had been a predictably great year here, I did what any true Detroit Techno devotee would do and made my way directly to the Made in Detroit stage within earshot of the Main Stage action. DJ T-1000 was on starting at 8, and after making it over quite late for Oldham’s set I regrettably missed hearing much of it while caught up in a long, deep, and winding conversation with the always talkative Adam X, who was on hand to listen to the Tresor veteran. Alan Oldham is a seminal figure in Detroit who was responsible for introducing many radio listeners to tracks from Mills, May, Saunderson, and Atkins in the pre-1990, formative era of the sound. His later work with UR, Woody McBride, and Dave Clarke only served to cement a reputation already written in stone on the streets of Detroit. What I heard from back stage was dependably deep, banging, and fast, but didn’t seduce me onto the floor. All of that changed when Claude Young went on and delivered what was surely one of the standout sets of the entire festival. He was using three CDJs and mixing breathlessly – it was absolutely impossible to tell what track was what, and he pored over his CD books at a pace that would wither anyone except maybe prime-period Mills. If it wasn’t heavy, fast, banging Techno, it was House tracks played silly, giddy-fast, and his ability to inject Funk, Soul, and feeling into music that was otherwise so hard is something that you’ll never hear anywhere except in the Motor City. He was obviously having the time of his life too, and such happiness and enthusiasm is contagious amongst a crowd of exhausted partygoers. Latching onto his vibe, we stayed there until he dropped the last record and heard a couple minutes of cheesy orchestral flourishes from the Main Stage, but then it was all over and we contemplated possibilities… I had just changed to a new hotel and had no idea where I was heading, was broke, exhausted, sunburned, and satisfied, so I simply said my goodbyes and made my way back to sleep and eat whatever was available, as we’d had no time today for a break. Another festival finished, another chapter written, and the legacy of Detroit seems as insurmountable as ever… reason enough to try it all again next year!
[photospace]
RSVP here
it wasnt Derrick May who joined chris liebing and speedy j, it was Steve rachmad at the after show party.
also, Luciano wasnt in detroit the whole festival.