Music highlights:
-Shake @ Green Light Go on Friday. He played way housier than I've ever
heard him, and it ended up being a great set.
-Cabanne @ Green Light Go. Nice minimal dubby techno. Perfect patio music.
-Dan Bell @ GLG. A little faster than Cabanne, but still hot.
-Alter Ego live @ Ghostly's "The Three Fates". Hearing 'Rocker' live made
everyone go crazy. And thanks to the Masons for a beautiful venue, lol.
-Matthew Johnson live at Yel. Easily the best live set I saw all weekend.
-Highfish @ the Underground stage on Sunday. I can't even explain what he
played, except by saying it was sick.
-Ryan Elliot at the Underground stage on Monday. He's easily one of the most
talented "newer" djs in Detroit right now.
-Mike Servito at the Techno Boulevard stage/tent. He should have been
playing one of the main stages.
-Magda and Troy Pierce on Monday night. Despite some serious sound problems,
the music was still great. They played mostly unreleased material all night
- their own plus run.stop.restore plus apparently all the white labls they'd
received in the past few months. With all the great music there is out
there, it's amazing to see how much more is floating around that we may
never hear.
-Kai Alce on Monday at the Music Institute stage. It was nice hearing
someone play all those great deep Detroit tracks and actually mix them
seamlessly. His set was flawless.
I didn't really hear anything that I *didn't* like during the weekend. I was
excited for Aardvarck but I expected more technically and some of his track
selections were questionable (i.e. if you're going to play Bjork, at least
play a good Bjork song). And Kenny Larkin opening up with a Ben Sims record?
He played way harder than I anticipated...not sure if that has to do with
his L.A. experience or simply wanting to shake up the crowd a bit after a
very downtempo afternoon at that stage.
The crowd did seem more mixed this year, although I will say that the
younger contigent seemed way younger. While some of the best music was being
played at the Underground stage, it also seemed to attract some of the most,
um, narcotically influenced members of the crowd, to the point where it made
being down there unbearable.
It was also good seeing Tristan and meeting his lovely girlfriend, as was
meeting Matt McQueen and Dan Sicko.
Overall, I think I spent less time at the festival this year than any,
although I did still have a good time. Working at the media check-in I got
to see a lot of the shennanigans going on backstage, and at certain points
it got a little scary (scary as in will the festival even finish out the
weekend). But I don't think the impact of the disorganization went unnoticed
by May et. al., and I really hope they feel like they never want to have to
go through a weekend like that again.
It was a little sad getting back to the hotel at 8am on Tuesday morning
knowing the weekend was officially over.
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