[walshed out] A last-ditch 2012 Movement Electronic Music Festival preview
Previewing a niche festival like MOVEMENT
-- some six states and 832 miles away -- only two days before it gets
underway is always a rather moot effort. Either it's been on your radar
for months and you're chomping at the bit
to hit the road. Or you haven't got a clue what the fuck I'm talking
about and you'll dutifully ignore everything that's forthcoming.
So
for the sake of validating my efforts, I'm going to pose this preview
as a pitch. To those of you still on the fence, unsure if a
Memorial Day weekend spent toiling in Detroit is for you, I have a bit
of advice: Just do it.
Get
in a car. Drive 12 hours -- shit, I'm sure most of you will sleep that
much between Friday night and Saturday morning anyways. And before you
know it, you're there. Last year,
my first attending Movement, was about as flimsy as a trip I've ever
undertaken. Knowing nothing of the Detroit area prior to my venture, I
booked a motel that was not only in Dearborn -- 20 minutes outside the
city -- but nestled squarely between a skrip club and a porn outlet. Yet, after weighing the probability that we would likely wind up the
victims of some heinously violent crime and acting accordingly, we managed to make
our way downtown and find a nice, commercially-sanctioned hotel without
much struggle.
Point
being, THIS COULD BE YOU! Tickets to the fest are a paltry $80, hotels
are on-demand, and there's still time! Hurry, Hurry, Hurry!
While
I admit that none of the above sounds remotely attractive upon reading
back, it'll all make sense once you touch down on Hart Plaza. It's
difficult to describe the synergy as it would translate to Boston,
because there's not a shot in hell that anything remotely relatable
could come to fruition thanks to hoops, red tape, and curfews. For a
place like Boston, wherein much of the music taking place at Movement is
typically confined to 100ish-person capacity nightspots, the feeling of
moving along to a cracking sound system in a city park, surrounded by
80,000ish persons, isn't imaginable. But in Detroit, the feeling is real
and it's otherworldly.
And it's liable to make your head spin, as was the case last year. I ended up with an after-the-fact wrap-up,
but this year I hope to maintain a more consistent stream of
coverage/consciousness. So keep tuned to this blog space throughout the
weekend and feel free to follow me on twitter @michael_c_walsh for up to the minute updates (some more maniacal than others, I'm sure, depending on where my mind's at).
Because
I've rambled enough and because there's nothing more I can say to
convince you to come along, here's a quick overview of where the fruit of my efforts will lie this weekend: Five acts you should see if you're traveling to
the D, but even if you're not, it's OK to listen to them anyways.
5) Actress
Make
no mistakes regarding his placement on this list, Darren Cunningham is
my most anticipated act of this festival. His album, R.I.P,
released last month on Honest Jon's defies genre labeling and is the coolest
thing I've heard in many a year. Virulent techno, constructed to shun
dancefloors. Which is why booking him for the picturesque Red Bull Music
Academy Stage during daylight hours (Saturday at 4:30 PM) is really
inexcusable. His productions and DJ selections
make no plays for hands in the air jubilation. Rather they're intended
to soundtrack eyes-closed, head-clouded bouts of disorientation. Of
course I still intend to pretend that I'm trapped in the bowels of a
dusty club and not alongside the sunny Detroit waterfront, but it won't
be the same. At the very least, I'm anticipating some confused looking
audience members.
4) Lindstrom
The Norwegian songster got straight derailed by the critical powers that be
for his early year effort to graduate from space disco to
Genesis-inspired prog. Wrongfully so, in my opinion. I mean, there's
only so many combinations of astral wooshes and slo-mo laser sounds one
can slap together before it's time to try something new. Regardless of
what genre he brings forth Sunday, I expect lots of weird and not a single
sourpuss in the crowd (at 7 PM).
3) Benoit & Sergio
Something
to be said about never releasing a bad track, as is the case with this
D.C. based duo. And the labels backing those singles speak to that
accomplishment -- with choice imprints such as DFA and Visionquest
amongst the handful that have pushed B&S's tunes. Unlike Actress,
their flirtatious brand of house is suited for fancily swinging your
arms around as if you were skipping on top of a cloud, or something.
Unfortunately, their festival set nearly overlaps Actress's
(Saturday at 5 PM), but I'm certain that I'll have the opportunity to
catch them at an afterparty, a very sexy afterparty.
2) Seth Troxler
Last year, I hearalded Troxler at the top of this very same list,
proclaiming the fest to be his homecoming after launching his own label
and conquering Europe on some bizarro Columbus type shit. Turns out it was
more a springboard than victory lap, as he moved forth unto bigger and
better things, namely a king-making summer run in Ibiza and a number two slot on RAs year-end DJ poll.
No longer an underdog, the bubbly bro is hoping a plane from opening
night on the Spanish Isle to Movement where he's playing a two hour
back-to-back set alongside Diddy's newest bffl (Saturday at 10 PM) and headlining two of the higher profile non-festival affairs.
1) Kevin Saunderson
A living
legend playing alongside his legendary friends in celebration of his
legendary label in his legendary hometown. Not much more to say on this one. He'll
be mashing alongside contemporaries like Derrick May and Juan Atikins
during Sunday night's KMS Records silver anniversary and doing the same to close down shop Monday in the Plaza (at 9 PM).
Catch you on the weird side.