Thanks for positive note Minto, but I must tell you that was the worst live set we've done in years. The sound guy screwed us so bad we should have stopped. The fact that he was inexperienced did not help matters. I was going to lose it and one point and really start killing people... ;)
Peace, Alex Minto George <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/01/2005 11:07 PM To 313@hyperreal.org cc Subject (313) RE: fuse-in detroit - technicolor mf Back from tha D after 20 hours of being on the road...off the top of my head while the weekend is still fresh in my mind: *this is a long review so break out the potato chips and onion dip* Day 1: Woke up around 11am and made it out to Submerge to take the gang record shopping. it was hard to get them out of there after entering. really happy to see Submerge reaching out to more labels outside of Detroit too. As always it was like feeding time at the troff, lots of techno enthusiasts and very little elbow room to dig for the slop. got to the festival kind of late after friday night's pre-fuse-in party at Oslo. As always every year previous, the schedule was so out of wack it didn't matter looking at the print out of the schedule i had brought with me. When we arrived Luke Eargoggle had just started up in the Musiclogical tent. He played a sweet set of LIVE electro and egyptian lover-like beats. sux we missed Orgue's set cause we had heard it rained early on at noon and there were a lot of people checkin out Brian's set. Also saw a bit of Pirahnahead's deep house dj set which was nice to hear as the sun was breakin out on the main stage. Really overall a nice beautiful cool and breezy weekend. Then it was back to the tent which is where I and pretty much most of the gang stayed the rest of the evening with highlight sets from Legowelt (best set i had ever heard Danny play going more into old school chicago Polarius mode), Cosmic Force (I had thought Cosmic Force was 2 guys but finally met Ben and he explained Edo does not have anything to do with Cosmic Force anymore and that it has been that way for a while now. Edo still records for Ben's marguerita label though), Bangkok Impact, and Detroit in Effect! What a show they put on too!!! Klen and Serge from Clone also played brilliant dj sets. Ultradyne ended the night with a nice set of dark mysterious EViLL! In between I caught pretty much all of Aril Brika's DEEP set on the main stage. Also Fabrice rocked it well too! lost of Detroit and gosh i remember hearing Robert Armani's Circus Bells played too! nice! and it's a shame we didn't meet up. next time Fabrice! ;) Missed a lot of people's sets too like John Tejada's set as well as tony olivierra, suburban knight, and electofunk live! which i was really bummed to miss since it was one of last year's highlight's for me. afterparty action started off at this middle eastern restaurant in Dearborn which had some nutty dope arabic music band playing. The food was incredile and the music was sweet...very inspirational. afterwards some crashed at the hotel and a few of us troopers made it out to see our favorite $tink play live late into the night... j played some favorites of course and a new track i had not heard before which was this slow struttin' bassline tune that had even legowelt jammin while all the other dutch crew were passed out on the floor. haha. A nice chill set by mah dowg with such short notice and amazing considering the little time he had to put it together. whew what an amazing first day at the festival. i would have been just as happy to go home at that point. Day 2... slow gettin up and made it out to the festival way late thinking we had missed raiders of the lost Arp but again the schedule all different from the posted one and we caught most of Mario's set which was definitely a highlight of the weekend. Scan 7 was sick! tough as nails techno and so good it made me punch convextion in the arm pretty hard. that track with the 808 kick in one bar with the decay all the way up *ucked me up! the re-uniting of AUX 88 was nice too. Seeing Model 500 LIVE was something I had been anticipating for a long time. It was cool to see Juan up there on the vocals but what was up with the air-101? haha too bad you can't play chords on that keyboard :P still a treat to see even as funny as some of the new juan lyrics were. "I'm the audiotech up in this *itch!" hahah yah hearing technicolor on that sound system was sweet. model 500 kicked off equals lame...so we ran over to see Robotnick. It was packed in the tent and i would describe it as italo-techno most of the time he played. very hi-nrg and not my cup of tea musically but fun to watch him doing old man dance moves up there and smiling real silly. Greg Earle and I were diggin the moment he played some OMD though :P late LATE night action included Coney's in Dearborn and a super late night LIVE/dj set by Rob Hood. Rob was awesome! i dunno what KJ means by his mixing being so bad...he was smooth as butter! He had the QY-20 along with his 909 at the gig. He would mix records in between live songs tapping in between on the 909 rhythm patterns. His family was there too standing like sticks like they weren't interested but nice to see them supporting Rob like that especially when he was playing from 4am till 6am! so glad i went to check him out even though i was wrecked after this one! drove back to Dearborn with the dawn sunlight blinding me and crashed hard! Day 3: waking up even later and even paid for an extra day at the hotel we stayed at just to get some more Zzzz's Dropped some of the gang off at the festival at 5pm and a group of us went out to Melodies and Memories way up on the 9 mile end of Gratiot and it was a store i had not hit before in Detroit. It was classic diggin time and there was plenty of stupid rare stuff sitting on the shelves still. Reggie at M&M was super nice to us and even pointed us in the direction of some stuff we passed up even after buying up 1/10 of the classics section. after the attack at the record store it was off to the festival and got there to see the second half of Carl's set. like someone said before not super smooth mixing but excellent track selection from C2 and a faithful following of people dancing to the music. Stayed to hear Rich Medina who took us deep into Afrobeat and deep deep house. first time for me to hear him and he was excellent. played some phili-soul classics too! stellar. I made my first attempt to try and enjoy the underground stage but the sound was so terrible like it always is that it just made me leave. The placement of the opposite side made it worse...mega bass-ey and muddy like an otter on a riverbank. Food court action was alright but much more slim than previous years. Did the price go up or was i just imagining? got juiced up and ready for UR's LIVE performance. It was very good and entertaining and much more jazz/funk style than UR's performance last year at the Cass afterparty. watching the eleven year old kid play on Inspiration was a good feeling and comforting knowing that UR is in good hands well into the future. by the end of the night my feet and legs were so sore i had to just sit out Mos Def and chill out front. It was nice meeting Greg Earle, Fred and Kent Williams from the list. Also nice running into old list members like JP Bagdonas, Marina, and Alan Oldham. I looked around for Shake after a friend told me he saw him but no luck amongst the sea of glowsticks and pacifiers in the festival crowd. I hope it continues and keeps on for more people to enjoy. I take new people up there every year and every year it inspires someone new. maybe next year boys and girls...thanks for some good times Detroit! minto down low music http://downlowmusic.org dLCMLP The Connection Machine PAINLESS OUT NOW dLVEXT2 E.R.P. 12" FEB dL SHOP LOWER LEVELS http://lowrlvlz.gemm.com __________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html
