Posted by Nick Meador on Feb 5, 2010 in MP3s, News
Just a quick post tonight to let you know about the new MusicEdge Concert Calendar. For a few months I’ve been using Google Calendar to keep track of upcoming concerts. Then tonight I remembered that you can embed Google Calenders anywhere on the web, provided that you make them public so anyone can see the content. So I made a new page on this blog, with a new link that says “Concert Calendar” — LOOK UP AT THE TOP!
(click to enlarge)
It won’t contain every single upcoming show in Michigan, but it will definitely have every concert that I’m even remotely interested in. Most listings outside of Michigan will be music festivals, since people tend to drive up to 10 hours for those things. (Man, typing that reminds me that Rothbury isn’t happening in 2010. That still hasn’t fully hit me yet. What a sad thing though…)
Posted by Nick Meador on Jun 17, 2009 in MP3s, News
I’m so sad that I won’t be seeing the ongoing tour between the Field and the Juan MacLean. They stopped at Double Door in Chicago last night. I was unable to make the four-hour drive just for that event. Rest assured that I’ll be blasting music from each artist at full volume every time I get an opportunity. And who knows, maybe one or both will get added to Lollapalooza or PMF at the last minute.
Other than expressing my pain over missing the concert, I bring up the Field because of his new album. I say “his” because the Field is Axel Willner (Axel?! What a name!) of Sweden — or it was just Axel. Now I hear he has a few others with him, at least in the touring band. Yesterday and Today was recently released in the U.S. on the Anti label, and it definitely demands attention. Whether or not it will make as lasting an impression as the previous one (From Here We Go Sublime) remains to be seen. That 2006 album is one of the most incredible electronica albums I’ve ever experienced. It’s title is perfect in that, from the very first track, it takes you on a voyage of the mind and hardly brings you back in one piece.
Audio: “The More That I Do” by the Field, from the new album Yesterday and Today
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I have explained that I’ve been in a techno frenzy since attending Day 3 of Movement Detroit 2009 (DEMF). As I learn more about Detroit’s techno history, I begin to draw comparisons between more recent music that I love. When I heard Carl Craig’s 1997 album More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art, the first thing I thought of was the Field. More specifically, it was track #9, “Dominas,” that did the trick. The uplifting beat, ambient background synths, and abstract, repetitive vocal piece seemed like a blueprint that Willner adapted for his own work.
Now don’t get me wrong: I just got done bashing Hercules and Love Affair for ripping off Detroit/Chicago duo Inner City. The Field didn’t cheat anyone here. Willner’s work is completely original. But there hardly exists a creative soul that doesn’t draw on outside inspiration, and musicians tend to feed mostly on other music. I have no proof that Willner is a fan of Carl Craig or any Detroit techno. But I am pretty confident that Detroit’s techno roots were a heavy influence on Europe’s now-powerful techno scene.
Audio: “Dominas” by Carl Craig
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In fact “Dominas” is probably a more accurate forefather to the Field’s debut album. I’ve read that Willner wanted the sophomore effort to be “more organic.” That’s fine and dandy, but it was the spacy, heady, slightly abstract feel of the debut that drew me in. And I can name half a dozen amazing organic electronica bands (i.e. – bands that sound like techno but really contain many recorded instrumental parts) in a jiffy. My favorite one is also from Sweden — they’re called Studio. But I’ll have to save them for a different post.
My Firefox browser just crashed — luckily I had saved the post just before — but I’m in no mood to lose any writing. The point of this post is that learning about Detroit’s techno scene has given me another reason to be proud that I’m a Michigan native. Visionary artists like Carl Craig, Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson have had a tremendous impact on the world. It wasn’t just because of the deteriorated nature of Detroit, but that’s part of it. And I identify with that, even though I’ve never actually lived within city limits. The collective failure of the region drives a creative mind to find a way to escape. These artists found one in their music, and they’ve taken the world along for the ride.
Posted by Nick Meador on Jun 11, 2009 in MP3s, News
I’d like to follow up the DEMF post with a few others in the same vein. After I attended Movement Detroit, I finally made an effort to learn more about the founders of Detroit techno, especially Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Carl Craig. I had heard that Juan Atkins was active in the ’80s using many recording names, one of which was Cybotron. I know you’ve all heard the song “Clear,” especially if you were obsessed with the game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City like I was around the middle of the decade.
What’s that? You never played Vice City? And you wanna hear the song? Well, don’t mind if I do…that is, as long as you dance the robot when you hear it.
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Now that we got that out of our systems, let’s continue. During my post-festival research, I realized that Kevin Saunderson had a project called Inner City with Chicago house vocalist Paris Gray. I knew the Inner City song “Good Life” from some ’80s compilation I found a few years ago — I just didn’t know the group had Detroit connections. The group, the song, and the album cover all scream late ’80s/early ’90s awkwardness. The cover especially; Saunderson looks like Wesley Snipes in Blade; the text is stretched vertically like something from an MC Hammer poster; Gray’s perm is atrocious.
Audio: “Good Life” by Inner City
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And yet, the album isn’t all that bad. Of course, that statement could be influenced by the impending ’90s revival that I keep forecasting. But either way, it stakes a claim to a very specific sound from a unique time and place. And now that I know that place was Detroit (or at least Detroit and Chicago), I feel a bit defensive about the fact that a modern band has blatantly ripped them off. That’s right. One of the most highly praised acts of 2008, Hercules and Love Affair, pretty much copied the song “Good Life” piece for piece on their debut album. The track “You Belong” isn’t a cover or a remake — but except for being in a different key, it sounds almost exactly the same.
Aside from the geographical factor, I’m also pissed because I think HaLA is extremely overrated. I agree that the American dance music scene is a little dried out in recent years, but trying to turn a frog into a prince never helped anyone. And this isn’t just a case of being influenced by Inner City and wanting to pay tribute. The synths, percussion, and vocals (with the exception of Antony’s annoying moan) are all simple duplicates.
Audio: “You Belong” by Hercules and Love Affair
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Why is Coldplay the only band getting sued?! I say if someone is gonna take this much credit for a sound that they didn’t invent, they deserve to be sued too. In fact, Inner City should also sue Pitchfork and other hipster media douche bags for trying to capitalize on the fallout of HaLA’s success.
But that’s enough venting on my part. It’s up to you to decide if I’m overreacting. Comment away.
Well oh well. I finally got to attend Movement Detroit! And it was everything I though it could be! The festival formerly known as the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (and still often referred to as DEMF) has been running in Hart Plaza over Memorial Day Weekend in some form or another since 2000. Now Ferndale-based company Paxahau has taken control, and they seem to know what they’re doing. Before the fest, I read on their site that they’re also coordinating a Movement Torino that will take place in Torino, Italy, over Halloween weekend. That means Detroit is now part of a global electronic music partnership!
Naturally, I went into DEMF expecting it to be the most positive and progressive thing that Michigan has experienced in the past year. I was only able to attend on Monday, May 25, but I wasn’t too disappointed, since the only name I recognized on the other days was RJD2 on Sunday. (Actually, I heard about the Glitch Mob because they’re also on the Rothbury 2009 line-up.) In a strange coincidence, I saw Heidi and Loco Dice Friday night Spybar, while I was in Chicago for the first part of the weekend. My girlfriend actually recognized their names on the Movement line-up (Heidi performed Saturday; Loco Dice performed Sunday).
Something to listen to: “Rainbow Man” by Busy P
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And of course this leads to a vivid memory of my Monday at DEMF: during the end of Ellen Allien’s set and the beginning of Tiga’s (i.e. – around 6 pm on the Beatport Stage) we saw Heidi dancing on stage in her Euro club gear! We also saw a grungy dude wearing a Rage Against the Machine shirt, only to realize later on that it was Busy P! If that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the Parisian owner of Ed Banger Records and (more famously) Daft Punk’s manager. Ed Banger, for the unfamiliar, is the home of Justice, Uffie, DJ Medhi, and a few other names that are staking out solid accomplishments for French house.
The point isn’t to lay out a “who’s who,” but merely to demonstrate that being at DEMF felt like being at the core of a massive tornado of electronica. I’ve read so much about Detroit being the birthplace of techno, but until that day, Detroit never actually seemed like a techno capital of the world. I’m still not sure if any of the artists had that in mind, since most of techno’s energy now radiates from Europe, mostly Germany and the UK.
So the Ellen Allien/Tiga block was amazing, but the first mind-blowing set of the day — and the set that seemed to have the most people talking, especially on Twitter — was Flying Lotus (3:30 pm on the Red Bull Stage). I had heard on his MySpace page that his albums are more headphone music, while his live shows tend to be much livelier. He wasn’t kidding! He mixed the album material with a wide array of other music. My favorite was when he sped up Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th” and put a beat behind it. He also pulled stunts like flipping between Snoop Dogg and intense drum ‘n’ bass techno.
Unfortunately the crowd during Flying Lotus was probably the worst I dealt with all day. I felt surrounded by hippie/thug hybrids (maybe they were all dealers?) who paid no attention to whose shoes they were stepping on. By 7:27 pm, I posted the following on the @MusicEdge Twitter: “DEMF is a weird mix of metrosexual club rats, candy raving hippies, and hard knock Detroit folk looking for a party.” And upon leaving the festival, I tweeted, “Movement wrap-up coming soon. Artists=dynomite. Sound=great. People=slightly creepy and unpolite. More later.”
I keep bringing up Twitter. Part of my mission at DEMF was to test new ways of covering such an event. I still took photos and video clips with my digital camera, but I posted updates to Twitter using my new iPhone. That probably sounds dumb, but I could actually track the realtime web convo about DEMF using my phone. I used Twitterific to search for “demf” so I could see who was posting from the festival. I also posted a few pictures with messages using TwitPic. After the fact, I saw that an account called DEMF_follower was aggregating and re-tweeting messages about the festival.
In doing so, I realized that “coverage” of such an event is no longer done by journalists or the media; it’s done by the audience. I already knew that — actually I’ve been screaming it (oh so quietly) in people’s faces. I try to explain why the industry is failing but no one likes to listen. However, talking about it and seeing it in action are two different things. Of course, to differentiate myself, I should be focusing on the “why” and “how,” but I seem to have rambled around those topics, so I’ll just leave you with some audio/visual delights.
By the way, other artists I got to see include Anthony Attalla, Afrika Bambaataa (think GTA Vice City, the Wild Style disc), Carl Craig (a Detroit techno legend), Michna (a Ghostly International artist who filled in for Benga at the last minute), Bassnectar (who I expect to see again at Lolla ‘09), and Benny Benassi (remember that crazy “Satisfaction” video from around ‘02?). What an awesome day! I can’t wait for next year!
Below you’ll find the photos and video that I took at Movement Detroit.
- The Ruminant Bant by Fruit Bats
- Logos by Atlas Sound
- Psychic Chasms by Neon Indian
- Eyelid Movies by Phantogram
- East of Eden by Taken by Trees
- Ephemeral Exhibits by Starkey
- Immolate Yourself by Telefon Tel Aviv
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