Last night I started out at the Untitled party -- cool artist warehouse at the corner of Grand River & Warren. Just caught the end of Derek P and a bunch of the Dorkwave crew mixing it up, then a live set -- really fine sound in a nice big room.
Unfortunately right around 2 I happened to see two of the po-po walking through looking a little (a lot) unhappy. They were headed for the room with the bar so I headed for the corridor to the door. Walked over to Detroit Contempo-, er, CAID, and as I was getting close I heard beats echoing off the buildings and I thought, they have a big system back at the last party. But no, it was AO bangin' the box at CAID with about 50 bored (I hesitate to stereotype but what the heck) suburbotypes sitting around drinking beer. Stayed for a while but decided it was worth one more try. Next stop, the official festival party at an absolutely enormous warehouse on Clay, the main room must have been 15,000 square-feet-for-real, with a terrific four-corner sound system and a second system in the only somewhat smaller entry room. But unfortunately only a couple hundred watching KMS and then Ken Ishii, I guess it was just too far from downtown and too new to attract a big crowd on a night with many competing events. I didn't have quite as good a run today at the festival as on Saturday, but the Dutch crew playing lots of acid house (if not all that well mixed) was a lot of fun, as was watching Derek and Rob Theakston and Craig Gonzalez at the DJ Supply booth. Craig got the call for an afternoon fill-in set on the main stage that went pretty well. Otherwise I think my favorites today were Scan 7 with a blistering set closing with (natch) "I Am From Detroit," and Stacey Pullen's crowd-pleasing set. Aux was a disappointment only because they had big audio problems until late in their set, which really dampened things out. But they came back and played a very good set with Juan Atkins as Model 500 - my only complaint was it was too short at just over half an hour due to schedule slippage. The closing version of "Clear" is a real keeper. Maybe the BBC will play that one (hint hint) :) phred live from harmonie park
