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| Made in Detroit, Differing Music Models | Made in Detroit, Differing Music Models |
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| DETROIT — If the giant commercial music festival seems to be a model of the recent past and the small, carefully framed festival seems one of the evolving future, Detroit experienced both past and future last weekend. | DETROIT — If the giant commercial music festival seems to be a model of the recent past and the small, carefully framed festival seems one of the evolving future, Detroit experienced both past and future last weekend. |
| The Movement Electronic Music Festival had its tenth annual edition here on Memorial Day weekend, attracting a total of more than 100,000 people from Saturday to Monday to Hart Plaza downtown and to after-parties until daybreak around the city. They wandered among six stages in the waterfront plaza to see artists from various eras, places of origin and levels of popularity: Kraftwerk, Adam Beyer, Four Tet, Carl Craig, Kevin Saunderson, the Black Madonna, the duo of Juan Atkins and Moritz Von Oswald. For a major festival with sponsorships and heavy promotion, it’s low on flash — no fireworks shows, no A-list movie stars on private terraces. But Movement is easy to understand from a distance. It’s a dance-music locus and a tourist draw in the city that gave rise to techno. It appeals to the body. | The Movement Electronic Music Festival had its tenth annual edition here on Memorial Day weekend, attracting a total of more than 100,000 people from Saturday to Monday to Hart Plaza downtown and to after-parties until daybreak around the city. They wandered among six stages in the waterfront plaza to see artists from various eras, places of origin and levels of popularity: Kraftwerk, Adam Beyer, Four Tet, Carl Craig, Kevin Saunderson, the Black Madonna, the duo of Juan Atkins and Moritz Von Oswald. For a major festival with sponsorships and heavy promotion, it’s low on flash — no fireworks shows, no A-list movie stars on private terraces. But Movement is easy to understand from a distance. It’s a dance-music locus and a tourist draw in the city that gave rise to techno. It appeals to the body. |
| Running concurrently with it was Trip Metal, approximately 100 times smaller: a first-time, and perhaps only-time, festival of largely nondance music, experimental or improvised or freaky or aggressive, in small clubs and cafes. It was organized in part by Nate Young, from the 20-year-old Detroit band Wolf Eyes, who headlined Sunday’s show. A few years ago one of its members, John Olson, who plays saxophone and electronics, started using the poetic term “trip metal” to describe its sound. Wolf Eyes is essentially an improvising rock trio with crude electronics and no drummer; it has often been called a noise band, and is certainly not a metal band. Its set at times came within shouting distance of jazz. Any confusion the term may have caused is only the kind of confusion that Wolf Eyes likes. | Running concurrently with it was Trip Metal, approximately 100 times smaller: a first-time, and perhaps only-time, festival of largely nondance music, experimental or improvised or freaky or aggressive, in small clubs and cafes. It was organized in part by Nate Young, from the 20-year-old Detroit band Wolf Eyes, who headlined Sunday’s show. A few years ago one of its members, John Olson, who plays saxophone and electronics, started using the poetic term “trip metal” to describe its sound. Wolf Eyes is essentially an improvising rock trio with crude electronics and no drummer; it has often been called a noise band, and is certainly not a metal band. Its set at times came within shouting distance of jazz. Any confusion the term may have caused is only the kind of confusion that Wolf Eyes likes. |
| Most of the smaller event took place in El Club, a new venue in the Mexicantown neighborhood that holds 300 people; it was free, supported by private fund-raising and a small matching grant from the Knight Foundation. (Mr. Young has been clear that he has no plans to continue Trip Metal, at least under that name.) Its only advertisement, paid for by the club, was a billboard on the corner of Trumbull Street and Michigan Avenue, by the site of the old Tiger Stadium, with only four words — all caps, no punctuation, no website address: “Trip Metal Is Fre.” That would raise a series of questions: What is Trip Metal? Why is it free? Why is it happening at the same time as Movement? Do these two festivals have something to do with each other? | Most of the smaller event took place in El Club, a new venue in the Mexicantown neighborhood that holds 300 people; it was free, supported by private fund-raising and a small matching grant from the Knight Foundation. (Mr. Young has been clear that he has no plans to continue Trip Metal, at least under that name.) Its only advertisement, paid for by the club, was a billboard on the corner of Trumbull Street and Michigan Avenue, by the site of the old Tiger Stadium, with only four words — all caps, no punctuation, no website address: “Trip Metal Is Fre.” That would raise a series of questions: What is Trip Metal? Why is it free? Why is it happening at the same time as Movement? Do these two festivals have something to do with each other? |
| Maybe, yes. | Maybe, yes. |
| The story that led to Movement began with the 1980s work of African-American D.J.s and producers including Mr. Atkins, Mr. Craig, Rik Davis, Eddie Fowlkes, Derrick May and Mr. Saunderson. They were creating the language of techno, triangulating a new sound from funk and electronic music — all the electronic music that existed then, whether from German art-pop groups like Kraftwerk or American experimental composers like Morton Subotnick. And they were interested in the future — technologically, philosophically, sometimes in a dystopian way. | The story that led to Movement began with the 1980s work of African-American D.J.s and producers including Mr. Atkins, Mr. Craig, Rik Davis, Eddie Fowlkes, Derrick May and Mr. Saunderson. They were creating the language of techno, triangulating a new sound from funk and electronic music — all the electronic music that existed then, whether from German art-pop groups like Kraftwerk or American experimental composers like Morton Subotnick. And they were interested in the future — technologically, philosophically, sometimes in a dystopian way. |
| At a daytime panel discussion on Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit — separate from the festival — Mr. May was asked about the future. “I think the future is going back into the past,” he shot back. “We’ve forgotten so much so quick that we don’t know where we’re going.” | At a daytime panel discussion on Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit — separate from the festival — Mr. May was asked about the future. “I think the future is going back into the past,” he shot back. “We’ve forgotten so much so quick that we don’t know where we’re going.” |
| All of them, except for the reclusive Mr. Davis, remain on the scene. Mr. Craig, Mr. Fowlkes and Mr. Saunderson played D.J. sets in this year’s Movement festival. And Mr. Atkins played a live set on Saturday afternoon in his austere, minimal duo with Mr. Von Oswald, the German techno producer. | All of them, except for the reclusive Mr. Davis, remain on the scene. Mr. Craig, Mr. Fowlkes and Mr. Saunderson played D.J. sets in this year’s Movement festival. And Mr. Atkins played a live set on Saturday afternoon in his austere, minimal duo with Mr. Von Oswald, the German techno producer. |
| Movement has had to negotiate a balance. For several years starting in 2000, before it was called Movement and taken over by the local production company Paxahau, it was called the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and was directed by Mr. Craig. Because it focused on local artists, didn’t charge admission and was hospitable to entire families, it generated a certain kind of civic pride. After growth and financial troubles, it became rebranded in 2006 as a more commercial proposition, charging admission and half-tilting toward currents in the exploding global club-music landscape: exactly what ensures a young audience, and turns off an aging and discriminating one. | Movement has had to negotiate a balance. For several years starting in 2000, before it was called Movement and taken over by the local production company Paxahau, it was called the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and was directed by Mr. Craig. Because it focused on local artists, didn’t charge admission and was hospitable to entire families, it generated a certain kind of civic pride. After growth and financial troubles, it became rebranded in 2006 as a more commercial proposition, charging admission and half-tilting toward currents in the exploding global club-music landscape: exactly what ensures a young audience, and turns off an aging and discriminating one. |
| It’s trying to serve both functions, and fills the park doing it, but the thrills can sometimes feel rootless. Jason Huvaere, a Paxahau founder, told me that the festival tries to keep roughly 40 percent Detroit artists in the lineup. This is where you can hear the Detroit originators, but also where you hear D.J.s from the world market, if generally not the most commercial ones (though Skrillex did play Movement last year, as part of the duo Dog Blood). | It’s trying to serve both functions, and fills the park doing it, but the thrills can sometimes feel rootless. Jason Huvaere, a Paxahau founder, told me that the festival tries to keep roughly 40 percent Detroit artists in the lineup. This is where you can hear the Detroit originators, but also where you hear D.J.s from the world market, if generally not the most commercial ones (though Skrillex did play Movement last year, as part of the duo Dog Blood). |
| What’s this audience’s profile? It’s hard to know. The audience is not all young and wearing panda suits. Some people are serious dancers; some are older, or student tourists, or casual fans. They were generally enthusiastic for: Kraftwerk’s performance in front of 3-D digital visuals; the joyous house music of Delano Smith and DJ Pierre; the ghettotech of DJ Godfather; the warm left-field disco of the Black Madonna; and a complex, lovely set by the English producer Kieran Hebden as Four Tet, bringing dynamics, voices and guitarish sounds into his mix. | What’s this audience’s profile? It’s hard to know. The audience is not all young and wearing panda suits. Some people are serious dancers; some are older, or student tourists, or casual fans. They were generally enthusiastic for: Kraftwerk’s performance in front of 3-D digital visuals; the joyous house music of Delano Smith and DJ Pierre; the ghettotech of DJ Godfather; the warm left-field disco of the Black Madonna; and a complex, lovely set by the English producer Kieran Hebden as Four Tet, bringing dynamics, voices and guitarish sounds into his mix. |
| Forty-percent Detroit may seem low, knowing that techno is a generator of authentic pride in a city that eats pride for breakfast. But in another sense that amount is principled. One wonders if the sizably young and white part of the audience would know the difference if the percentage were 30 percent, or 20. One also wonders if the more ahistorical dance-music fans wouldn’t quickly become more historical, and more Detroit-minded, if the festival were to produce some visible extra layers of content — publications, documentaries, panel discussions. | Forty-percent Detroit may seem low, knowing that techno is a generator of authentic pride in a city that eats pride for breakfast. But in another sense that amount is principled. One wonders if the sizably young and white part of the audience would know the difference if the percentage were 30 percent, or 20. One also wonders if the more ahistorical dance-music fans wouldn’t quickly become more historical, and more Detroit-minded, if the festival were to produce some visible extra layers of content — publications, documentaries, panel discussions. |
| Offsite and after hours in the clubs is a different story. At the Saturday night party for Tresor, the German record label with a stake in Detroit culture, I saw the old-school Detroit D.J. Claude Young play a vertiginous set, teasing the room with techno and disco records, interrupting and cutting up songs relentlessly, keeping the tempo high and ending with David Bowie’s “Golden Years,” weirdly accelerated to beat-match the song that came before it. Some time after 3 a.m. Monday at No Way Back, the Sunday night party for the Detroit record label Interdimensional Transmissions, I heard BMG — Brendan Gillen, the label’s founder, a kind of historian and a rigorous underground techno D.J. since the mid-1990s — hold forth for about 90 minutes. He ended with a deconstruction of Prince’s “Erotic City,” or so I heard; I had moved on by then. That party wrapped up at 10 a.m. | Offsite and after hours in the clubs is a different story. At the Saturday night party for Tresor, the German record label with a stake in Detroit culture, I saw the old-school Detroit D.J. Claude Young play a vertiginous set, teasing the room with techno and disco records, interrupting and cutting up songs relentlessly, keeping the tempo high and ending with David Bowie’s “Golden Years,” weirdly accelerated to beat-match the song that came before it. Some time after 3 a.m. Monday at No Way Back, the Sunday night party for the Detroit record label Interdimensional Transmissions, I heard BMG — Brendan Gillen, the label’s founder, a kind of historian and a rigorous underground techno D.J. since the mid-1990s — hold forth for about 90 minutes. He ended with a deconstruction of Prince’s “Erotic City,” or so I heard; I had moved on by then. That party wrapped up at 10 a.m. |
| Beneath its prankish or weird surfaces — a set by Nautical Almanac included some creatively guided hypnotherapy — Trip Metal was just as history-minded as Movement. It had panel discussions. It showed films. Its aesthetic tributaries would include Detroiters like the Stooges and Alice Coltrane, as well as the Chicagoan Sun Ra. (Sun Ra’s saxophonists Marshall Allen and Danny Ray Thompson played a Trip Metal set on Saturday, in collaboration with the younger Chicago-based electronic house-music experimenter Jamal Moss, a.k.a. Hieroglyphic Being.) They would also include earlier mavericks of electronic-music composition, particularly the 83-year-old Mr. Subotnick, who played a Trip Metal set on Saturday night on his modular synthesizer, starting with sounds like gurgles and human cries and ending with rippling melodic pulsations, pretty close to techno without the patterned thumps. | Beneath its prankish or weird surfaces — a set by Nautical Almanac included some creatively guided hypnotherapy — Trip Metal was just as history-minded as Movement. It had panel discussions. It showed films. Its aesthetic tributaries would include Detroiters like the Stooges and Alice Coltrane, as well as the Chicagoan Sun Ra. (Sun Ra’s saxophonists Marshall Allen and Danny Ray Thompson played a Trip Metal set on Saturday, in collaboration with the younger Chicago-based electronic house-music experimenter Jamal Moss, a.k.a. Hieroglyphic Being.) They would also include earlier mavericks of electronic-music composition, particularly the 83-year-old Mr. Subotnick, who played a Trip Metal set on Saturday night on his modular synthesizer, starting with sounds like gurgles and human cries and ending with rippling melodic pulsations, pretty close to techno without the patterned thumps. |
| During a daytime Trip Metal panel discussion — at Trinosophes, a cafe in the Eastern Market neighborhood — Mr. Subotnick was also asked about the future. “I don’t think there is a future,” he said, evenly. “I know that sounds bad, but the concept of the future and the past is going to disappear.” He was coming at it from a different angle than Mr. May, talking about documentation rather than memory; with documentation, he seemed to be saying, the past becomes the future. “Nothing disappears anymore,” he said. “Things used to disappear because there weren’t any recordings.” | During a daytime Trip Metal panel discussion — at Trinosophes, a cafe in the Eastern Market neighborhood — Mr. Subotnick was also asked about the future. “I don’t think there is a future,” he said, evenly. “I know that sounds bad, but the concept of the future and the past is going to disappear.” He was coming at it from a different angle than Mr. May, talking about documentation rather than memory; with documentation, he seemed to be saying, the past becomes the future. “Nothing disappears anymore,” he said. “Things used to disappear because there weren’t any recordings.” |
| There was a little audience crossover between Movement and Trip Metal. Look at Mr. Gillen’s biography and you find that he engineered or produced a couple of Wolf Eyes records. There’s no real reason Hieroglyphic Being and others on the bill wouldn’t fit in at Movement — maybe even Mr. Subotnick too. And there were Trip Metalesque moments at Movement: a wild minute of palpitating noise during Mr. Young’s D.J. set, Terrence Dixon’s D.J. set with live musicians toward the end of the Tresor party (so I heard). Perhaps a philosophical version of the future — and/or the past — is to be found in that crossover. | There was a little audience crossover between Movement and Trip Metal. Look at Mr. Gillen’s biography and you find that he engineered or produced a couple of Wolf Eyes records. There’s no real reason Hieroglyphic Being and others on the bill wouldn’t fit in at Movement — maybe even Mr. Subotnick too. And there were Trip Metalesque moments at Movement: a wild minute of palpitating noise during Mr. Young’s D.J. set, Terrence Dixon’s D.J. set with live musicians toward the end of the Tresor party (so I heard). Perhaps a philosophical version of the future — and/or the past — is to be found in that crossover. |
| Established 2006 | Established 2006 |
| What it is An extension of the original Detroit Electronic Music Festival, which started in 2000, celebrating the city’s history of techno in the context of electronic dance music’s global evolution. | What it is An extension of the original Detroit Electronic Music Festival, which started in 2000, celebrating the city’s history of techno in the context of electronic dance music’s global evolution. |
| Attendance About 40,000 people a day, from Saturday to Monday. | Attendance About 40,000 people a day, from Saturday to Monday. |
| Number of events Around 125 on the festival’s six stages, and many more at the after-parties. | Number of events Around 125 on the festival’s six stages, and many more at the after-parties. |
| Landscape Hart Plaza, a concrete city park on the Detroit River built in 1975, designed partly by Isamu Noguchi. | Landscape Hart Plaza, a concrete city park on the Detroit River built in 1975, designed partly by Isamu Noguchi. |
| Typical festivalgoer Mixed in age, background and style, but an even split between genders. Lots of ravers under 30, shifting from the casual to the committed as day turns to morning. A lot of “Detroit Hustles Harder” T-shirts. | Typical festivalgoer Mixed in age, background and style, but an even split between genders. Lots of ravers under 30, shifting from the casual to the committed as day turns to morning. A lot of “Detroit Hustles Harder” T-shirts. |
| Only here Kraftwerk performing “Numbers” in front of 3-D digital visuals at 10:15 p.m. on Saturday on the main stage; the Detroit D.J. Claude Young taking the same song apart with turntables and cross-faders four hours later during the party for Tresor, the German record label, in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood. | |
| Established 2016 | Established 2016 |
| What it is A three-day festival organized by and around the Detroit “noise” (or “trip metal”) band Wolf Eyes. | What it is A three-day festival organized by and around the Detroit “noise” (or “trip metal”) band Wolf Eyes. |
| Attendance 300 people a night, in the main space and in the back garden of El Club, a promising new spot in Mexicantown. | Attendance 300 people a night, in the main space and in the back garden of El Club, a promising new spot in Mexicantown. |
| Number of events 25 sets in three nights, with talks, film screenings and after-parties at other sites, including the cafe Trinosophes and Jack White’s Third Man Records. | Number of events 25 sets in three nights, with talks, film screenings and after-parties at other sites, including the cafe Trinosophes and Jack White’s Third Man Records. |
| Typical festivalgoer Late 20s to early 60s. Highly knowledgeable about the last hundred years of experimental music, especially in Detroit. | Typical festivalgoer Late 20s to early 60s. Highly knowledgeable about the last hundred years of experimental music, especially in Detroit. |
| Only here The semi-rock-star and motivational speaker Andrew W. K., Nate Young of Wolf Eyes and Twig Harper of Nautical Almanac, who all attended Community High School in Ann Arbor, Mich., performed an improvised set on Sunday; its foundation was Bach’s slow and meditative Chorale Prelude in F minor, featured in Andrei Tarkovky’s film “Solaris,” played on the keyboard by Andrew W. K. |