Movement 2003 Review

Douglas Singleton
Photographs by Lisa
 
So Detroit's electronic music festival was handed over to the DJs in 2003. The festival was given to Derrick May (with guided spiritual assistance from fellow techno godfathers Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins) and renamed the Movement festival. They pulled it off. Derrick could be seen bouncing about the festival's grounds at Hart Plaza all weekend long. Although Atkins and Saunderson managed to play sets at the three-day festival, despite all the press conferences and organizational difficulties (they had only a few months to organize what usually takes about a year, and no money from the city), May himself was too busy organizing to play the festival itself (he played Movement's official afterparty, but more on that later).
 
One of the big differences between this year's festival and past DEMFs (as it was called) was the conceptual focus of the various stages. Whereas previous festivals were comprised of four major stages or tent areas that were earmarked for specific sponsors (i.e. Bacardi Underground, CPOP Stage, Genuine Draft Ministry of Sound Tower, etc.) this year's delineation was conceptually based (though still corporately sponsored). The Underground Stage, similar to past festivals, was filled with experimental musical offerings and more underground, cutting edge DJs. The High Tech Soul Stage put on display many of the festival's live musical offerings with a focus on soul, jazz, hip-hop, and soulful house and techno---"futuristic soul music". The Music Institute Stage, actually a tent at the rear of the grounds, paid homage to seminal Detroit techno club The Music Institute (actually open for only a year or so in the late eighties), which like the Warehouse in Chicago and Paradise Garage in New York was extremely important in crafting the ethos (both musically and spiritually) by which most of the DJs who built the Detroit scene based their style. The Movement Stage, the main stage of the festival, like past years held most of the festival's headlining acts. Unlike past years the main stage benefited from being pulled down into the plaza with the people instead of perching the performers and DJs high above everyone.
 
But the music (as I experienced it):
 
Saturday
I imagine that because she was scheduled to jump off the festival so early in the afternoon at 12 o'clock that Stacey "Hot Waxx" Hale, longtime fixture in Detroit techno circles gracing clubs and radio stations since the early eighties, stayed around the Music Institute Stage tent until later when she could join Kelli Hand for a tag team set of slammin' house and techno anthems (and oddly enough the only time I heard "Strings of Life" all festival). K. Hand rocks, it's always a good sign when a DJ finds herself so moved by what she's spinning that she's got her hands swinging up in the air while she jabs back and forth with the crowd. This kicked the festival off for me with a bang. The Music Institute Stage tent was undoubtedly party central for Movement ‘03, party ground zero. Most of the other stages had their peaks and lulls but every single time one visited the Music Institute tent it was filled with raging partiers of all ages and dispositions doing some serious, serious grooving.
 
Underground Resistance soldiers Buzz Goree and Rolando spun back to back sets on the Movement Stage, jumping off the night session. Rolando did the hard electro thing to begin with before getting progressively harder, nothing too rattling, just hard techno grooves. They were followed on the main stage by Kevin Saunderson and Kenny Larkin on four turntables-weekend highlight number one: Kenny and Kevin taking turns mapping out their history of Detroit, relentless and smooth. I don't know, it's always weird for me to see these legends up there doing their thing like they can, so effortlessly and heartfelt, and then see all the people out in the square dancing, right here in Detroit (here in America), black, white, old(er), raver kids, gangs of hip-hop kids, families sitting up on the steps. All listening to the groove. I felt kinda good for Kenny and Kevin. At one of the press conferences later Kenny Larkin said when asked how he felt about being back in Detroit and having the spotlight so gloriously beamed onto Detroit techno that it felt great, like a vindication. He related the experience of having his mother and family come out to the first festival in 2000 to see what it was he did and it, yes, bringing tears to his eyes. For this reason he would always support the festival and especially now as the focus had been squarely placed on DJs and musicians from Detroit. After Kevin and Kenny played their set Larkin spun alone and a friend of mine called it his favorite moment of Movement ‘03. I missed it, as did I the live performance by ESG, probably the most talked about happening of the festival. It was ESG's first time in Detroit and Kenny Larkin said they were simply amazed by all of the DJs who had been influenced by the "no wave" electro records they did in the '80s.
 
At the SPITE afterparty I caught the last half hour of Underground Resistance's Suburban Knight, on decks and laptop (final scratch?). It seemed a continuation of Rolando's set earlier but with the pace picked up, the beats harder. The purpose of doing SPITE was to catch Robert Hood, who rarely if ever comes to New York. After awhile Hood jumped on the decks and was very quickly so hard and complex that things felt instantly taken to another level. It was worth it. One would think that with the bpm's pumped so fast the music would lose character, but it did not. Hood is very hard but the music "rich". His spinning is so serious, no-holds-barred intelligent and complex that it's perplexing. It would seem impossible to be both speedy-fast and funky-that defies certain laws. But he manages to do it, hard, hard, rich, speedy-funky beats. Almost like some gabba ghetto s**t. It was very, very nice. But then after 40 minutes or so he and someone started talking up by the decks and then Hood just snatched his records off the tables and left. A guy got up on a microphone and said the cops would be there to bust the party "in 8 minutes". The doors opened and the place cleared out. Whether the cop thing was true or not or there some problem with Hood and money or whatever we never figured out (we stayed-the cops never came).
 
Sunday
All I saw, or rather heard, of Carl Craig's Detroit Experiment (it was too packed over by the High Tech Soul Stage to get anywhere near actually seeing the band) was some MCs spitting over beats while the band jammed. On the main stage I caught the British collective put together by Charlie Dark, Blacktronica, which deserves a little discussion. To quote, "Blacktronica was initially conceived as a forum for black electronic expression. An attempt to reclaim electronic music from its white washed arena and celebrate the contribution of black musicians to the genre…. From Carl Craig to Coltrane and everything in between because there's more to black music than Hip Hop, Garage and R&B…. In effect, Blacktronica is about celebration, celebration of our heritage, our culture, our past and most importantly our future." On stage the collective of DJs spun some broken beat, aggressive soul, 2-Step, garage, a little dub, and massive breakbeats, progressing to a little drum ‘n jungle before going back to a little glorious soul music again. Very interesting, a beautiful world: mixtures of beats, complicated but friendly, cool. The dancers liked. Me liked.
 
I moved over to the Music Institute tent in preparation for 3 Chairs and caught the last 20 minutes or so of Mike (Agent X) Clark ripping s**t up, crushing house that would soar into techno and then out again (most of the "Detroit" DJs, like many from Chicago, seem to have little regard for the so-called line separating house from techno, effortlessly zipping back and forth between the two, or failing to acknowledge an esthetic difference to begin with). He came hard, aggressive, funky, and correct.
 
3 Chairs kicked off with Theo Parrish on the decks playing mid-tempo house, no, disco-soul. By this time the tent had grown thick with anticipation for their set: Theo, Marcellus Pittman, Rick Wilhite, and the infamous Kenny Dixon Jr. (Moodyman)-3 Chairs. (Or should it now be four?) I'm not gonna lie-it felt like the Detroit house equivalent of the Beatles at Shea Stadium in '65-heads were rolling in from the sides of the tent, pushing their way up front, gossiping about who had jumped on the decks yet or not, jockeying for position, dancing maniacally. When Theo took the decks over from Mike Clark everybody jump-kicked into grooving: boogie trans disco, soul, old school party anthems rolling into slamming metallic Detroit techno. Malik Pittman jumped on for Theo and began upping the ante. At some point one of these guys dropped a Shalamar track ("Make That Move"?, "A Night to Remember"?-I can't recall), a strolling bassline re-mixed in, and I myself lost it. Brother's were rolling into the tent in suits and hats with their women on their arms, pushing their way up front to slide in with all the ravers off their heads jumping about, B-Boys breakin', and older cats just checking it out on the sidelines like gangsters. Rick Wilhite hopped on the decks and you just knew things were about to get very, very serious. The area ten yards in front of the stage was one mass of gyrating bodies twisting and jumping. People started shouting, "Detroit!!!" then "East Side!!!" "West Side!!!" and I thought Rick was gonna cut the record and let people just shout and sing. Girls and dudes were thrown up into the air by the throngs, held aloft and passed along, body surfing. (Body surfing?!) It was crazy. More people began rolling in from the flanks of the tent, coming in from listening to Stacey Pullen on the main stage or Francois K at the High Tech Soul stage, all asking, "Kenny Dixon Jr.?". He had yet to come on. When Theo Parrish jumped back on the decks following Wilhite there was worry that the infamous KDJ was about to stand everybody up. When 11 o'clock had almost rolled around some of the more serious heads began exciting the tent, leaving it to the partiers wilder and wilder by the moment (and none the wiser about the missing KDJ). But then I spotted him behind the stage-he tapped Parrish on the leg to let him know he was there, and Theo visibly brightened, jumping back into his tracks knowing he was about to pass the decks off. KDJ was escorted into the tent by none other than Derrick May himself. Apparently he was none to happy at all of the cameras popping away everywhere. He was pissed. Or else it was all some kind of insane drama. (Someone told me later that he had been out at a festival parking lot all day drinking with his boys.) Before he would get up on the decks he wrapped a mask around his face, UR style, and plopped a black hat over his head pulled down low over his eyes. I actually saw Derrick May motion to the PA guy to kill the lights in the room and aside from a few stray strobe lights the room went semi-dark. KDJ kneeled down on the platform and reached his hand up blindly to adjust the mixer levels before allowing anyone to see him, waiting until the last possible moment before stepping up to the decks. When he finally jumped up there behind the decks, in black mask, like some Black Panther assassin, the room just erupted. Hard metallic disco-pandemonium. It was crazy. He didn't even play that long, 20 minutes? 5 songs? And then was off. Wilhite jumped back on the decks and finished the crowd off. They loved it, people were practically having sex on the dance floor-female couples (to keep off the boys?), three-ways, man, people were groovin'. At Movement itself Three Chairs (specifically Theo, Marcellus, and Wilhite) were the most fulfilling event for me, a black barbecue circa 2030: old disco, hard techno, ancient neo-soul, black, white, old, young, the "intelligent" contingent along with those just booty shakin' losing it. At the same time Kenny Dixon Jr.'s set, which I'd practically come to Detroit to hear, was a letdown, great theater for sure, but I'll take beats over that anytime. (But more on KDJ later).
 
So the "official" afterparty for the Movement festival was held at an establishment a good ways out from downtown Detroit called the Tangent Gallery, an arts complex filled with galleries and performance spaces. It was the only place that Derrick May was scheduled to play. He was preceded on the decks, surprisingly I thought, by Francois K of New York "Body & Soul" fame. Francois K spins many styles-he presently does a dub party in the meatpacking district of Manhattan-but his forte has always been soulful garage-y house, an odd choice (or perhaps not) to precede Derrick May. Francois surprised though by spinning techno, often hard. He spun Latin house, he actually spun thirty seconds or so of one of those solo Q-Tip tracks. He was good, very interesting, hard, soft-a solid groove. He jumped and bobbed around up there a lot, into his own thing, trying to get others into it, and then got hard again. Some of those present were there with him but most of the crowd more or less seemed to hate it: It was four in the morning and they wanted real techno and they wanted Derrick. Derrick, Derrick, Derrick. Francois didn't get off until some time after 5.
 
Out of the dozens of parties you might attend during the festival filled with DJs one has never heard before it might seem an odd choice to choose a party with someone as well known as Derrick May, who you've probably heard dozens of times, or can hear multiple times throughout the year, no matter where you live. But that would not be in Detroit, and it wouldn't be during his own Movement festival when a million people are in town to check out "Detroit". He seemed to play with a vengeance, aggressively so, as if he had something to prove. I don't know if there was something about the festival and all of the work and hurdles that it had to overcome that had him worked up but when he hit the decks you could just tell that it was no joke. There was a lot of fooling around up behind the decks between he and Francois while they made the exchange (I got the feeling Francois had expected to be done well before 5 in the morning-he'd played for 3 hours). There were at least two dozen people surrounding the decks, spying, waiting for Francois to finish and Derrick to start, inspecting every little thing each of them did. You could feel the impatience (the handoff took around 20 minutes). When May hit the decks the place, all of those who had lasted (it was 5:15), exploded. And he hit it running, off into some extreme tweakin' trickery from the start-notes and bass and tones dipping and soaring through the air as he tweaked here and there, bobbing his head, stepping back from the mixer like a pimp and then attacking it on beat. Amazing. It was as if the room had been lifted off the ground and raised a few feet into the air. I remembered being exhausted and impatient the moment before he started (like many present I had been going since Sunday afternoon) but then two minutes into his set I felt like this was the only place I could possibly be. Of course. It was the real thing. Heads stood around transfixed. A few of us caught each other's eyes and kind of smiled. There was undoubtedly a new Rhythim Is Rhythim track he dropped (by new I mean unreleased)-I'd bet my life on it, it had all of the strings washing over themselves that you associate with Derrick's production work, bass rolling underneath. Mid-tempo. When the song finished and he went into something else I awoke from a little trance it had put me into and kissed the woman next to me on the cheek. She smiled as if to say, "Why the kiss?" "It was so beautiful." I said, waking. I'm not quite sure she understood. I danced a little but it was hard for me to do so. It was too good. You felt an overwhelming need to spy him up there on the decks. Beyond good. Scary. The music just got completely inside. I remember saying once that it sometimes hurt to hear those 5 hour sets that Sneak does, it just gets so good at some points and goes on for so long that you can't take it anymore. This set felt like that from the very beginning. He played a lot of mid-tempo stuff, which surprised me in how well it worked. He dropped a techno-groove remake of that Lou Rawls song, "You'll Never Find". He played a little of what I'll call "bass" breaks. It wasn't breakbeats-if you played breaks without drums and simply tweaked a bassline itself this is what it might sound like. Built-only-with-a-bassline "skipping" breaks, and therefore techno. Almost angry perfect. Later at some point, I swear to god, he would step away from the decks and look over the room, checking out the effect he was having on everyone (many of us stood in a daze). He looked at people individually and smiled, or smirked (he looked at me). In a way it was a little sadistic, but friendly too I guess. As we exited into the sunlight some of the old black guys who "ushered" for the Tangent Gallery asked us how it was, if it was worth it. "Yeah." we said.
 
Monday
I felt I'd already "gotten what I needed" by the time I made it out to Hart Plaza on Monday, and was just looking to have a good time, hear a good variety of music. I jumped over to the Music Institute Stage and caught the end of Eddie "Flashin'" Fowlkes' set. As usual the crowd there was losing it to his crazy rambling jumpin' beats. Juan Atkins came on after him and was just glorious. I didn't hear a lot of his set but what I did of it was really solid, what else would you expect? He had a few technical problems-at one point Derrick May even got up there with him to help figure out some kind of stack mixer he had sitting on top of the regular mixer. It took him a while to settle down but once he did he was he was his neo-disco wizard self.
 
Didn't hear enough of Matthew Dear on the Underground Stage to give an opinion but there was a good vibe in the room and he seemed to be spinning serious beats. Magda followed and rocked the room pretty hard, spinning a set that engaged all the little ravers up front, which was good. Usually they are just down there thrashing about to the beat without listening. She had them engaged though, they were hearing her (it should always be this two-way street).
 
Over on the High Tech Soul Stage DJ Milo was unleashing an all out jammy-jam for all the heads there truly feeling his vibe. It was a regular riot, he was all over the place-disco, James Brown, 1st generation hip-hop, 70's soul jams, house anthems, and the people were just in front of the stage eating it up, dancing up a storm, "Wild Bunch" style I guess. To show you how crazed things got I spotted Theo Parrish amongst the crowd dancing his ass off too. He had someone who looked like a young nephew of his or something and was swinging the kid around dancing. He and his boys were having a blast, I think they all knew Milo. I guess DJs dance too. It was the best, carefree vibe I felt all weekend. Following him was another DJ who I never ID'd (the lineup over on the High Tech Soul Stage just got mauled as the weekend progressed) who came with some murky, weighty hip-hop (trip) soundscapes. People were still dancing but he was in danger of scaring them, crushing the stage under the weight of a thick murk. He'd play some slowed heavy industrial beat murkiness and then kick it up with some straight out roving hip-hop beats and then come with some dub. He was having massive problems with the mixer and then the channel he was using to shoot the CD vocals he was trying to drop along with everything. Milo tried to help him, the technical people tried to help him, things just wouldn't go right. The sound shut off for almost five minutes. He looked frustrated; whoever the guy was in charge of running technical things had not a clue. When he finally did get it going the band for Slum Village had started setting up behind him, virtually chasing him off the stage 40 minutes before he was due, he looked a little shaken. I wish I could have caught a proper set by him, whoever he was, without his being under such duress.
 
I got back to the Music Institute Stage tent in time to catch the last half hour of Atkins, everybody had made their way inside the tent to check him. He was straight up hard techno by then. I feel that I am slighting by not drooling over him in detail but when someone like Juan does it so often (and you've by that point heard so many good sets) it's hard to say anything other than he was "glorious". When he finished there was a mass exodus from the tent as heads moved to the Movement stage for Jeff Mills, abandoning D. Wynn. Wynn and his people didn't seem to mind, getting their Detroit house thing on and more than willing to leave the other heads to their "German Mills". D. Wynn stuck a few incense in the mixer and went into a sneaky groove.
 
During a tiny break from Mills I caught some of Grand Wizzard Theodore on the High Tech Soul Stage. He was spinning hard beats, though all fairly common (that's not meant as a diss). Thing was that he wasn't playing any of the vocals, just allowing the crowd to supply them if they wanted while he cut and sliced and scratched the s**t to shreds, a constellation of sliced beats. He had an "MC" whose sole purpose was to make sure everyone knew who Theodore was and what he was actually accomplishing up there on those darn decks. He started with "My Adidas", and I know played the beats for both "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't (Nothin' to F**k With)" and "M.E.T.H.O.D Man", vocal-less but the words supplied by all. I was surprised by how hard the Grand Wizzard brought it really. Jazzy Jay usually comes all party correct, but Theodore was head slapping hard, scratching relentlessly, I guess living up to the M.O.
 
At the Underground Stage with DJ Godfather & Shortstop there was complete and utter pandemonium: slamming 190 bpm's, people running around in gas masks, girls doing that "booty shaking" s**t, and about 30 people standing up on the stage with all of them. Security was going crazy trying to get people from crowding the ramp leading down to the stage, which was mobbed. It was crazy. There is no doubt in my mind that the next crazy thing that goes down in the scene drawing mass negative attention will be Ghetto Tech speedy breakbeat related. I'm not sure if that' s a bad thing or hope for the future.
 
At the Movement Stage anticipation of Mr. Mills was intense. Derrick came on and introduced Jeff and alluded to something of an unacknowledged competition between the two of them back in the day. Mills started with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, acappella, and then segued into "Jaguar". It was kinda magical. But then the sound was all f**ked up and low and there was obviously something wrong. Before long there were technicians all over the place and Derrick was back on the mike saying that Mills was so hot he had blown the mixer. It took them a little while to get him back up and running again but when they did a little had been lost. He jumped right in with some old school electro that had a bunch of the crowd going, and many of us surprised. It was cool. He went mad old school for a bit-electro, hip-hop (all pre-'87, I remember a Run-DMC track), and old school house jams. I remember saying to myself at one point, "Jeff Mills is playing a straight-up soul song". He did some scratching and turntable trickery. It was beautiful. He played "Rapper's Delight". I spotted an old African-American woman behind us mouthing all of the lyrics, as was I. Eventually the electro and hip-hop disappeared and he got harder, giving those there to hear "Jeff Mills" what they wanted, but only a little. He jumped on his 909 and rocked out-the people up front going crazy. He went back to some electro and old house (it was weird hearing the crackling of the old records booming out of Hart Plaza's sound system, coming from Mills). Harder again, back to the 909, and then he was off. Barely, if even, an hour and a half. Now, he really had the crowd jumping. I have to admit that the idea of seeing old school heads, families and the such out in Detroit grooving to Jeff Mills was a pretty cool sight for me to behold. For me. But you could hear the grumbling from the hard techno heads before he was even finished playing. (One guy I know got so disappointed by what he was hearing that he just up and left and went back to the hotel.) Sure, Mills had a couple of mixing mishaps, "crash and burns" as they call them (yes, he did), records skipped on at least two occasions (yes, they did). That coupled with the mixer burning out debacle and he definitely seemed to struggle at times. Of course the Mills cognoscenti hate hearing him play any tracks they have heard him play elsewhere before. He wasn't hard and euphoric: "Jeff Mills". But so what? He came back to his hometown and threw down some beats for the masses, had them shaking their asses, and that had to have been good for him and many in Hart Plaza, for all of us. The record skips made him more human to me-I was beginning to think he was some kind of techno cyborg or something. He surprised me, was flesh and blood. (I hate to break it to some of the "purists" but there is a whole school of mixing that jumps, abruptly, between tunes, shouting itself out to the audience. It's very ghetto. Not everyone always wants invisible, "seamless" mixes.) He was exhausted, probably overwhelmed with emotion (his family was in the wings as he played). It was a really a great vibe.
 
So that night I caught Paul Johnson at Panacea. He was supposed to be "versus" Colette or something like that but I only caught him grooving. He was hot and jumping and though I usually hate this kind of thing he had a live trumpet player who actually jammed along with the groove, adding something in a meaningful manner instead of getting in the way of the music. I rushed to the Global Encore thing at The Works ‘cause someone SMS text messaged me that Mills was the "surprise guest". Jeff was actually in the house when I got to the club but he wasn't playing, just hanging out in Detroit for a night. For some reason there was an unbilled Juan Atkins in the front room (was he meant to be the "special guest"?) jamming on as he had been doing hours earlier at the festival. (Again, I feel like I'm slighting Juan by not going on and on about how good he was-here classic techno, not banging bangin' hard, disco or house, but just "Detroit", it was crazy good.) In the back room there was Todd Terry, rocking out, the best "strictly house" set I heard all weekend. Kevin Saunderson came on after Terry and rocked for a bit, very solid. (Have I slighted Saunderson too by not gushing?) When Ron Trent walked into the back room I figured I could catch him in New York and got ready to leave. It was 4:30 or so. There was a changeover going on in the front room and I figured Atkins was handing the baton over to Junior Sanchez (who was on the flyer). There were about seven people on the dance floor. The guy taking over behind the decks (actually an area off to the side of the bar) for Juan wasn't a big heavy dude though but a relatively skinny brother. Intrigued before taking off back to the hotel I asked someone standing near the booth who it was. "Kenny Dixon Jr."
 
So I got another Red Bull, flabbergasted, and sat back to take him in. It was kinda incredible, initially I thought he was fighting the crowd, not mid-tempo house, not even that smart disco s**t, but straight up soul tracks he was playing, and not even obscure ones-I knew practically every track. He wasn't mixing, simply cutting from one song to another (that again) and then letting the song play out. You know, like they do at barbecues. I just laughed, it was so ghetto it was beautiful. I thought, "These people want some bangin' beats and he is playing old slower-than-mid-tempo soul tracks, commencing his set with them, at 5 in the morning. But then I guess word spread through the place and people started hitting the dance floor. People never stopped streaming into the front door of the joint, always a tell-all sign. Before long a dozen people were dancing. And at some point, maybe it was 40 minutes or so, he dropped some rolling disco bassline s**t and it was on. You could feel it coming and if you were there to bear witness you were ‘bout to get it. What is Kenny Dixon Jr. on? Some futuristic black family backyard party s**t? The Stylistics meet Kraftwerk? And then he got to that hard metallic disco and it morphed into roving Detroit. He was mixing by then, sliding his way to serious techno and it all made perfect sense, people, a few dozen now, were on the dance floor losing it feeling his vibe, streaming in from the back room. I had some KDJ, it was intense. It was true.
 
I decided to walk through the morning streets back to the hotel, past old Tiger Stadium, past the street people huddled up against buildings sleeping. The streets were empty, they always seem to be that way in Detroit, that perfect of industrial wastelands.
 
peace,
Douglas Singleton
Photographs by Lisa
 
Worthwhile events that I missed:
Liquid Liquid
ESG
Wax Taxin'Dre/Rob G/Baby Daddy/ Kid A etc. afterhour
Pole
Akufen
Speedy J @ Paxhau afterhour
Amp Fiddler
Anthony "Shake" Shakir
Carl Craig and Detroit Experiment
Detroit Techno Cabaret afterhour
Cannonball afterhour
 
Links
http://www.dogsquad.co.uk/~lisa/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=Movement03