Movement Electronic Music Festival in Detroit (May 25-27, 2013)
Written by: Michelle Gajewski
For the past several years, only at the end of May, a strange and thundering sound would take over for a weekend—despite clear skies and no news coverage of bizarre goings-on in the area. Eventually, my friends and I clued-in about an amazing electronic music festival happening just across from us over the Detroit River. On several occasions we were reminded of this by the loud reverberation, that could be heard from kilometres away, and the crazy light-show, which made it too little too late to make the great trek into a foreign land and enjoy the show first-hand. But this year, finally, we did it; it only took a whole year of reminding ourselves but we finally made it to the Movement Electronic Music Festival. Partly to make up for lost time, but primarily because it was more cost-effective, we decided to purchase the entire weekend pass.
The first day of the Festival began on a Saturday—which is fairly weird for us Canadians because even if a Monday is a statutory holiday (it was Memorial Weekend), Friday-Sunday is the typical event time-table. But with each day typically running from noon to midnight, I can understand why Saturday-Monday was chosen.
My one friend got a list of recommended DJs that were performing at the Festival, so we made them our priority and… wow, I’m sure glad we did that. Long gone are my days of obsessive-compulsively knowing the name of all artists and bands, plus all of their songs, albums, first pet’s name, and great-grandmothers’ maiden names— because that was very “high-school.” I gave up on all of that when my listening pleasures shifted towards electronic music. Now, I simply enjoy the music through my friends and let them worry about all of that. Anyways, I was really appreciative of the recommendations because not only did it make our lives easier, but they typically were pretty great. On the off-chance that we deviated from our list, we were left squished in a crowd with no good music to compensate for our lack of space.
Fortunately, Hart Plaza provided five separate stages to choose from at any given time. The one we frequented the most was the Beatport Stage, situated right along the Detroit River. The DJs here tended to spin more up-beat music. The high energy from the crowd and DJs made it easy to simply “get lost” in the music, despite consistently having one of the more densely crowded audiences. Some notable DJs we listened to at this stage included Hector, Masters at Work (Kenny Dope & Louie Vega), and Maetrik. But there was one particular DJ that stood out from all the rest we saw that weekend. He was by far the most enthusiastic DJ (that we saw) and the music was perfectly high-paced and enjoyable. It wasn’t until I came home and checked the line-up that I found out it was MOBY.
The Red Bull Music Academy stage, the largest stage found at the heart of Hart Plaza, also featured some worthwhile DJs, like Carl Craig (the most amusingly expressionless DJ I’ve ever seen), Stacey Pullen, and Squarepusher. The music tended to be mellower at this stage, although it was still highly danceable. Once in a while we navigated towards the Made in Detroit stage that was right at the entrance. My favourite from there was Magda. The music wasn’t like most up-beat dancing stuff that I like. It was more of an ambient electro-industrial kind of thing—if I had to attempt to describe it. On a couple of occasions, we ventured to the Electric Forest stage but would immediately venture back out, for they featured hardcore dubstep, which none of us particularly enjoyed. The Underground stage, that literally was underground, seemed interesting. We didn’t even find it until the second day, but alas, inadequate ventilation and an infestation of cigarette smokers made it insufferable, so our discovery was useless.
The music wasn’t the only thing I enjoyed. I also got to experience my first ever real corndog and oh… my… goodness… it was divine. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but Pogos have been lying to me my whole life. My friend also split an “elephant ear” with me, similar to a Canadian beaver tail—which I quite enjoy because, you know, fried dough topped with more simple carbs is the way to go.
For an event like this, I really expected the crowd to be quite an ordeal for my semi-agoraphobic self, but it wasn’t too bad. Yes, there were lots of people, and yes, they usually invaded my personal bubble, but my urge to punch people in the face for being all up in my space was relatively low –I’ve had worse experiences waiting in line at Tim Hortons. The cold weather and intense rain on the last day were the least enjoyable features of the weekend, and if the weather is my only complaint, then the Movement Electronic Music Festival is definitely something I plan on attending again in the future.