Memorial Day Weekend: SWOON @ the 2011 Detroit Electronic Music Festival
Every damn year, I tell myself the same tired story: you’re too old, you’re too broke, you’re flying across the country to a city America sees as the symbol of failure… to convulse to music much of these same people despise…. What are you doing?
Answer: fucking shit up to the best music in the world, keeping hope alive. To paraphrase Derrick May and Winston Churchill in one stroke, going to the DEMF is always an illogical, insane decision that should never happen - but for ten plus years, it’s been the best decision I could have made. Late notice, but if you want to go to an event that is not bullshit; that annually re-affirms one’s faith in global culture: do it.
This year, Swoon is doing more than simply having beatific, apoplectic fits on the Detroit River - we are doing guerrilla coverage of the whole she-bang, gonzo-style, the results of which will be unraveled in this summer’s print issue of Swoon, Techno and Technology. We will witness, we will testify, we may even churchify. We will also be interviewing some of the most interesting electronic artists on the planet, from perhaps the greatest genius of Detroit tech, Carl Craig, to the mercurial Polish experimentalist Margaret Dygas, to four-to-the-floor house preacher Terrence Parker - a man that has driven a card-carrying pagan boy like I to scream out “PRAISE THE LORD!”
We promise to share all we can in words and pictures, but words and pictures convey raver magic ecstasy like…like a fish needs a bicycle. So do some mecca-makin’ if you can. If you failed to feel the Rapture last weekend, you might find make up for it in the D. More realistically, listen to live feeds of the event, provided this year by techno-headz Resident Advisor (see links below). Swoon will try to infuse some bleeping-hallelujah-sweat into the covers of its next issue, though getting a vial of fluids excreted from the bodies of the beat-possessed past TSA might be tricky.
Special thanks to MOTOR CITY BLOG for tag-teaming with us Swoon-loons - they’ll be snapping the shots of M. Swoon doe-eying his idols - as well as Canning Communications, festival organizers Paxahau (hi Chuck!), the eight gazillion turntablists who REALLY make this all possible… and whatever god who’s responsible for making all this music.
Peace, love, unity, respect.
LIVE FEED DEMF LINKS:
