The rains almost entirely went around Detroit, so it was actually rather nice.
The music overall was pretty decent: I liked Space Dimension Controller, low-key dubby spacy. Ana Sia came on right after like a house afire, though I thought her first 20 minutes were the strongest. She's picked up bits and pieces of every dance music genre and blended them in with bass-heavy breakbeats of various flavors. Good stuff and if anyone can have an actual stage presence while twisting knobs and pressing laptop keys she's got it. It was great to finally see Deepchord/Echospace and the underground stage sound was pretty suitable -- dubby and muddy. Steve Rachmad rocked it later on there -- kept it clean and simple to deal with the acoustics. Something fritzed out on stage halfway through his set and he lost some momentum, it might have been epic otherwise with very pleasing hard but not banging techno Hung out at the Beatport stage for a while... the flavor of the moment from Europe seems to be put a pretty groovy tech-house beat up and riff off it for an hour. Good for toe-tapping but not memorable. I liked Delano Smith most of all last night, he's always been one to challenge the floor with a mixture of classic house styles and offbeat tracks and this was no exception. Someone said to me last night Movement is more like an outdoor club than a festival. That seems about right. The great vibe of the first couple years (along with the heavy drama) is all gone, but it's still interesting to dip back in and see what is currently on the musical menu... fh
