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Bruno Postigo
Movement 2018: Five key performances
- PublishedMay 31, 2018
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- Walking around Hart Plaza with a couple overseas colleagues, I found myself explaining, on several occasions, the unique qualities of the Midwest raver. In among Movement's 100,000-strong crowd, you'll spot UR T-shirts, glow sticks, cosplay, shirtless guys, scantily-clad women, older black fans who listened to The Wizard on the radio and white kids from the suburbs just out of high school. Over the weekend they'll rock to techno, house, hip-hop, ghettotech and electro, performed by dozens of DJs and live acts. Even in its 18th year, Movement still has a casual, anarchic feel that harks back to the Packard Plant raves.
While the off-Movement afterparty scene beckoned to the cognoscenti with particularly deep offerings, the democratic nature of the main festival—it's an all-ages event, and offsets esoteric acts with marquee names like Wu-Tang Clan—keeps Hart Plaza central to the weekend. The DJs, too, know they're on hallowed ground—Diplo opened his set with Rhythim Is Rhythim's "Strings Of Life."
Resident Advisor took over Underground Stage for the second year running, and we were honored to present local legends like Mike Huckaby, DJ Stingray and Mark Flash alongside rising stars like Eris Drew and Charlotte de Witte.
Here are five key performances from this year's edition.
Bill Converse b2b Carlos Souffront The RA stage kicked off with a back-to-back that was steeped in both artists' Michigan roots. Hailing from Lansing, Bill Converse started DJing at an absurdly high level in his preteen years, learning from the likes of Claude Young, Traxx and Twonz before moving to Austin, Texas, in 1998. Carlos Souffront relocated to the Bay Area a few years ago even as his crew, Interdimensional Transmissions, has been ascendent. On Saturday, they played two hours of almost exclusively Converse productions, bringing their high-octane mixing style to this trove of material. Many of us have gotten to know Converse the producer via recent releases on Dark Entries. Going by this set, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Too Short Saturday's programming has traditionally included hours of ghettotech from the likes of DJ Deeon, Brian Gillespie and DJ Slugo. This year, Movement backed away from the fast, gleefully misogynistic style, with Godfather serving as the only representative from the Databass Records camp. Too Short's inclusion on the lineup felt like a populist scratching of that X-rated itch. The Oakland rapper, who hit the Red Bull Stage after Godfather, reminded everyone he'd been "fucking with Detroit since '89," his deft, crowd-pleasing set heavy on raunchy classics like "Freaky Tales."
Antenes In her RA feature from last year, Lori Napoleon, who started DJing around the time the Hart Plaza festival began in 2000, revealed just how seriously she takes the craft. "I went to Paris to study for a semester in 2001 and had to leave my turntables behind. Since I couldn't mix there... I would take the [rave] mixtapes and score them out... I would write down and memorise exactly how the EQs were used and what beat they were changing on." This has to be why her set on the RA stage was one of the weekend's most technically impressive. Napoleon methodically worked through an afternoon's worth of rattling, atmospheric techno from Dax J ("Atlantis"), Wata Igarashi ("Adrenochrome") and The Secret Initiative before looking up from the CDJs to wave to the whooping crowd.
Inner City Some of my best memories from Movement have been headline sets from local heroes on the main stage—Jeff Mills in 2007, Model 500 playing Cybotron's "Clear" in Star Wars costumes. Inner City, responsible for some of Detroit's biggest anthems, was a natural choice for Monday night, though they played second-to-last, before Wu-Tang Clan. Kevin Saunderson presided over a seven-piece band, standing with his son Dantiez, performing in front of a screen projecting graphics and footage laying out the group's place in history. Many of the highlights involved the rising Detroit vocalist, Steffanie Christian, with both "Big Fun" and "Good Life" getting spirited renditions. But beyond the hits, the pumping E-Dancer sound felt flattened out, if deeper than most of the music at Movement Stage during the weekend. The group ended with a solid downtempo number that gestured towards the early UK audience that made them stars. Shortly after, hundreds of confused audience members shuffled out of the amphitheater.
Blake Baxter The Prince Of Techno took the Stargate stage on a hot Sunday afternoon looking positively regal in a Dashiki and straw hat. He attended to a table's worth of gear, including a Doepfer MS-404 and the acid box it emulates, the TB‑303, which is crucial to his acidic, funky techno sound. Classics like "When A Thought Becomes You" and "What Happened," featuring Abe Duque, got an airing, yet it wasn't until the latter that Baxter grabbed the mic. Around the time that that record came out, in 2004, the lyrics, which ask "what happened" to techno and acid, might have felt more appropriate. Over Memorial Day weekend 2018, though, the health of those genres was clear across Hart Plaza and the surrounding city.
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