DETROIT, MI - There's no doubt about it: electronic music is having its moment in the sun. Daft Punk won Album of the Year at the most recent GRAMMY's. Pop acts from Katy Perry to Ke$ha are all lacing their tracks with beats and synths. And DJ's like Afrojack and Skrillex regularly make six figures a night in Vegas, where dance clubs have replaced casinos as the Strip's leading source of revenue.
But, roughly 30 years into the history of electronica as dance music – it's been around the classical world since the early 1920's – only a handful of presenters still hold true to the music's diversity and underground heritage. (Rave, anyone?) Barcelona's SONAR, which I attended in 2011, is one; Montreal's MUTEK is another. Most other scenes, such as Ibiza, Vegas' Electric Daisy Carnival or NYC's very own Electric Zoo are largely brainless bacchanals geared towards juiceheads and bimbos who look like castoffs from the Jersey Shore.
For those interested in a truly authentic experience – and not just a beach vacation – few places are more essential to the history and development of electronic music than Detroit, Michigan. In the 1980's, local DJ's Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson developed the style known as Techno, inspired in part by the sounds of the car factories near where they grew up. And, in spite of all of the economic difficulties of the past decade, Detroit continues to be a wellspring of electronic music, birthplace of major artists such as Jeff Mills, Carl Craig and Seth Troxler, as well as the original "Belleville Three."
To celebrate Detroit's connections to electronic music, the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival was held on Memorial Day weekend in 2000, attracting more than a million visitors (estimated) to Hart Plaza, sandwiched in between downtown and the Detroit River. Fourteen years later, the festival – which was renamed Movement in 2006 – has emerged as one of electronic music's most important (if not necessarily largest) gatherings, with a lineup of local and international DJ's that would be the envy of any promoter. After a decade of Memorial Days spent on the beach (or in Berlin), I decided it was high time I spent this one in Detroit.
I arrived on Sunday afternoon, having spent the first part of the weekend checking out some other music in nearby Cleveland. My initial impression was that Hart Plaza is a shitty little place to hold a festival, packing five stages into a 1970's era concrete park less than half the size of Randall's Island. But, what else would you expect in a post-industrial city like Detroit? At least there was no noticeable bleed from one stage to the next, thanks mostly to the ridiculous amount of amplification under use.
While waiting for the crowd to wake up from the previous night's afterparties, I had the chance to chat with Angie from Detroit Techno Militia: a local DJ collective that's been active since 2002.
"It's an incredibly tight-knit scene,"Angie told me. "We've all been friends for at least 15 years, and have been throwing parties since the late 90’s. Detroit's going through an artistic rebirth, and Movement's been a big part of that. It's been an incredible platform for us to showcase our music."
Indeed, some of the weekend's most interesting sets could be found on the Made In Detroit stage, located just inside the festival's main entrance. On Monday, techno legend Kevin Saunderson curated a full day of music called "Origins", including up-and-coming stars and old-school vets from the Detroit scene. Saunderson's son, Dantiez, showed that the music is in good hands, playing loops and beats to a diverse – if sparse – afternoon crowd. Niko Marks followed, combining vocals, drums and synths in a retro mix of soul, R&B and Disco.
The stage came alive as the sun went down and the crowd filled in to hear Eddie Fowlkes, one of the originators of techno whose early track, "Goodbye Kiss", Saunderson credits as having inspired him to become a DJ. Saunderson himself took over the wheels from Fowlkes, spinning spicy techno for the next two hours to a delirious crowd, sharing the last 45 minutes with Seth Troxler.
I also spent a lot of time at the Beatport stage, which had unobstructed views of the river and Windsor, Canada, with the GM towers looming above like a Fortress of Solitude, icon of Detroit's greatest successes and most devastating failures. I heard a string of quality DJ's there, including vets like Pete Tong and up-and-comers such as Swiss duo Adriatique, Berlin's Dixon and the U.K.s Heidi. Unfortunately, the view was too often marred by the sight of 40-something candy ravers and shirtless youngsters buttfucking their submissive girlfriends. Whatever happened to Unity, Love and Respect?
Live acts were the order of the day on the Moog stage, where napping partiers lay head-to-toe on a tiny patch of grass along the river. Onstage, Canada's Jacques Greene played an experimental set using live electronics that was surprisingly sophisticated, if not immediately danceable. NYC disco band Escort came without their usual string and brass section, but lead singer Adeline Michèle carried the day with her charismatic stage presence, channeling everyone from Donna Summer to Sadé. Hands down the best live show of the weekend.
Movement's main stage, sponsored by a certain energy drink, was placed at the bottom of a Greek theater-like bowl in the center of the plaza. That was where I caught all the big-name DJ's, including old favorites John Digweed, Richie Hawtin, Marco Carola and Carl Cox. But, I was probably most excited to see Carl Craig there on Monday afternoon: aside from being one of today's most influential and creative techno artists, Craig has done more than anyone to support electronic music in his hometown of Detroit. In addition to being the driving force behind the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival, Craig has his own 501(c)3 foundation which provides scholarships and other opportunities for Detroit-area high school students looking to pursue a career in electronic music.
As much as I enjoyed basking in the warm May sunshine, I found that the relentless barrage of lights and driving bass became unbearable after a couple of hours at a time. As such, I spent long stretches hiding out in the VIP/Media area, or ditching Hart Plaza altogether to go hang out and watch the Tigers game in some nearby bar.
Of course, I might have felt differently if I'd been in a different state of mind. As in: a large percentage of the people I encountered at Movement were under the influence of one controlled substance or another, usually MDMA – better known as "Molly" – or Ketamine (i.e., "Special K"). And, as much as electronic music festivals like Movement all say they have a strict anti-drug policy and perform bag checks on each guest entering the grounds, those searches are cursory, at best. Surely, festival producers are aware that illegal drug use is pervasive in this scene; some would go so far as to say there wouldn't even be an electronic music scene without these drugs.
I'm not judging: I've used these drugs myself, and they certainly enhance the experience – at least for awhile. But, they are Schedule I drugs. And, every year, you hear about a couple of doe-eyed youngsters who took one too many pills or forgot to drink enough water and got themselves into trouble. How long is it going to be before someone's lawyer mom or dad sues the pants off one of these festivals? Or, the DEA decides they need to make an example of some of these promoters? Anyway you look at it, the whole thing is a house of cards.
Detroit icon Derrick May has been particularly vocal about the subject, insisting that drugs aren't necessary to enjoy the music, and in fact were never part of the scene until techno took root in Europe in the late-80's.
"Nobody was on drugs, man," May said in a recent interview. "Kids smoked a little bit of weed, drank a little liquor, they had a ball, went home, made love and felt good feelings all week. What does it say about the music now that we have to do so many drugs to simulate that same feeling of euphoria? Unfortunately most of these kids will never understand what the music was all about, or what it could be about."
May doesn't limit his ire to audiences:
"How many of the guys playing records now could actually say he loves the music that he plays with heart and soul, so when he plays he's bleeding inside? As if he just made love to the music? Only a few of us have any real heart, any real intention of taking a chance or trying to make a difference…The rest of these guys popped up out of the water and they're taking the scene exactly nowhere. And the drug culture is right along with it because most of the kids out there dancing to this music don't understand why anybody else would like this music until they pop a pill, and then all of a sudden the music sounds funky."
I'm sure most of these "guys", some of whom make close to $50MM a year, don't really care if Derrick May thinks they have any heart or soul. But, assuming they enjoy their Gulfstream jets and designer sportscars, they might want to think long and hard about how much of their audience relies on these drugs – and how little of their audience would be left without them.
Fortunately, most of the DJ's at Movement know exactly what this music means, and how it should be heard. Tops on that list is Jeff Mills, another Detroit techno legend who cut his teeth in local underground clubs – his stage name was "The Wizard" – before jetting off to NYC and Berlin in the early 90s. Mills spun an epic three hour set to close Monday night in an underground concrete bunker adjacent to the main stage, yet light years away in its vibe. Mills has an intellectually sophisticated style that defies categorization: hard, ecstatic, industrial, minimal, punctuated by the sounds of computerized blips and beeps. Mills has been called "the most brilliant DJ and producer of techno in the World," and while that might be overstating things a bit, his set at Movement hardly offered any evidence to the contrary.
On my way out of Hart Plaza, there was the usual gauntlet of promoters passing out flyers to afterparties, which would carry on all through the night and into Tuesday morning. Among them, a kid in a baseball cap and green t-shirt handed me a small black sticker with a phrase written in white block letters: "DETROIT HUSTLES HARDER." The message was clear: while the media and its "ruin porn" may have left Detroit for dead, there's something genuinely exciting happening here, a groundswell of activity fueled by low costs, a rich cultural heritage, and a midwest work ethic that built one of the greatest industries the world has ever known. In many ways, Detroit reminded me of Berlin when I first went there over a decade ago, filled with bombed out warehouses and cheap apartments taken over by artists and musicians from all over the world, many of whom are now enjoying successful careers. If Detroit can do only half as well as Berlin has done at reinventing itself, there's one helluva story waiting to be told.
"Visitors (to Detroit) are coming to see a city that looks like a disaster movie set," May told The Guardian recently, "but it could become fascinating if young people can get a chance to turn this shit into something new and exciting. We've had thousands of these settlers moving here. Maybe, just maybe, some will stay and help to form a creative class that will help rebuild the city."