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Published: February 26th 2012
Main stage crowd
Move to the groove at MovementToday, I woke up in pain.
My lower back was twisted in severe knots.
I finally figured out what had happened.
Remember that Hart Plaza is mostly concrete (see
Put Your Hands Up For Detroit).
Dancing on concrete is different to dancing on most floors because the hard surface sends shocks straight up the legs.
Those shocks had ultimately injured my lower back.
I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
The one nice thing is that it gave me time to catch up on paper work, between back soaks.
By evening, I was finally feeling better.
I had time to catch the last few festival acts.
It was not a lot, but it was something.
It turned out they included two of the better acts of the weekend.
The first of the acts was
Green Velvet.
They play a variant of very minimalist techno, with no keyboards at all.
What makes them unusual, and worth seeing, is their experiments with rhythm.
They mix up different speeds of drums, and lots of different drum sounds, to create complex patterns.
I liked this quite a
Movement
Main stage bit.
Most of the music is deliberately loud and harsh.
Given that Detroit is a city where it feels the apocalypse could arrive at any moment, it was very appropriate.
Green Velvet is also unusual in that they use live singers.
Most techno groups either play prerecorded vocal tracks or stick to instrumental music.
The singers got the crowd worked up, and matched the music pretty well (Sample lyric: “Has anyone seen my brain today?”)
See some of it:
The final act was
Fatboy Slim.
Roughly a decade ago, Fatboy Slim was the most popular electronic music act in the world.
He had multiple hits which reached the top 10 on the pop charts, including “Rockafeller Skank” and “Weapon of Choice”.
I saw him perform in a small club during those days, and it remains one of the best live shows I have ever attended.
Sadly, electronic music was swamped by hip hop on Top 40 radio soon afterward, and Fatboy Slim disappeared from view.
He has kept working, however, and his live show is still very good.
Movement crowd
Feel the electronic bliss at Movement He played a mix of house and techno that on the surface resembled Sven Vath.
He spiced his show with many more remixes, some of them surprising songs.
He did a medley of Supremes (who were from Detroit) hits mixed with techno.
He remixed rap songs into house masterpieces.
He also played a jaw dropping remix of the song “Star 69” (which I'm not linking).
When he initially created it, the British censorship office forced him to remove a certain line before it would be played on the radio.
Fatboy Slim responded by creating a video for the song that featued him dancing in tribal makeup in front of a huge billboard with the offending lyric on it.
The song became a huge club hit, which he played tonight with the video.
Wow.
Fatboy Slim's Movement set is not online, but others with near identical setlists and videos are. Here's one of them (WARNING: Not Safe For Work)
Movement was delirious fun, one of the best music festivals I have ever been to.
They booked
Movement
Main stage a wide variety of acts and most of them were good.
The crowd was incredibly accepting and chilled out for an event like this.
The organizers and even the cops mostly stayed in the background.
Anyone who likes electronic music, and especially those who also like Burner type events, needs to experience this festival.
It will blow attendees minds.
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