6 posts tagged “techno”
Last weekend saw the notorious late night revelry masterminds from Minimoo, whose secret, last minute, invite only soirees harkened back to the roots of rave culture, and resurrected the lost art of the late night loft party in New York, attempt something truly magnificent with The Minitek Festival.
While many who attended had negative things to say about the festival, and its organizers likely bit off far more than they could chew with an event of that scale, I for one tip my hat to them for being the first folks I can remember to attempt to showcase electronic music on a Euro-esque festival scale in NYC. NYC has long been an important city on the map of the global techno underground, and the rise of the minimal genre, and these parties in particular, really did a lot to put NYC back on that map as a destination for appreciators of great and cutting edge dance music. This was able to stem a tide of neandertahls meatwad clubs and model-bottle culture that essentially destroyed everything that was beautiful and lovely about NYC musical nightlife.
I offer them my congratulations for what they tried to do, and by many accounts, in the face of nearly impossible circumstances, they were able to salvage some pretty amazing moments. Should they try again in the future, I will support them and hope to be able to attend. Anyone who attempts to throw even small parties in NYC knows how difficult it is, and someone had to try something like this eventually. Doing so is worthy of some praise in my opinion, as the first to try has no real model for success, and is always the easiest to criticize.
Full disclosure: I know the main organizer, Jenny, personally, and like her a lot. She's been very cool and nice to me since starting her parties and I consider her a friend, though not a really close friend.
I've downloaded and am enjoying Konrad Black's set. Perhaps you might to!
DOWNLOAD: Konrad Black live at Minitek
Thanks to Wendy - be sure to check her out and add her to your feed, bookmarks, whatevs at We Came to Make Party - for sharing this. Originally posted via Beatportal.
Check it out here. I must confess this is too computerized for me. I guess I'm a new school old school kind of electronic music fan.
Also on the techno end of things, those of you in NYC should be checking out the Minitek Festival this weekend. They've worked hard to bring a European class music festival to NYC, and have an amazing bill of underground dance talent booked, including the above referenced Richie Hawtin, Francois K, MANDY v. Tiefschwarz, and many lesser known artists. It's a truly magnificent bill for techno fans, where you can hear some legends and industry luminaries and also check out some outstanding up & coming talent.
Tickets are available at Resident Advisor.
I'm secretly a little sad to be missing out on this. :(
EDIT: Apparently this Detroit article was from 2006, so ix-nay on the Kwame Kilpatrick relevance, hahaha!
The Onion's streak of untarnished hilarity continues, uninterrupted from the publication's inception until now - and that is a fluid now - these folks just never miss!
This one held particular resonance as it came just two days before Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was sent to jail. Mr. Mayor has since been released.
All jokes and philandering politicos aside, I went to Detroit once for DEMF, and having become fascinated by the city as the most prominent example of American urban poverty resulting from loss of manufacturing jobs and wondering how, if at all, this played into Detroit birthing techno, I read Dan Sicko's excellent "Techno Rebels" at the suggestion of good buddy and techno-mentor Peter Anthony. Required reading for any fans of the bommpty-boomp; as Peter once put it, "to know the future, one must know the past." I guess that reads oversimply out of context, but it is fun and useful knowledge to learn a bit about how the city shaped the rise of techno.
And now that that little techno tangent has come to a close, back to Detroit as a symbol of urban decay. It was once the 7th city in the US in population, and, as we know, home to the automobile industry, but as cheaper and more reliable Japanese imports cut into the market for cars, the city suffered and ultimately kind of collapsed, culminating with race riots in 1968 which emptied the city of its white residents, who headed for the burbs and didn't come back. Visiting Detroit is indeed a real trip - totally crazy place. There's office furniture there in dilapidated buildings from the 1950s that's simply never been taken away.
Take a little spin through the excellent site The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit for an animated tour.
LOLawesum.
Another wknd has come to a close, which is a weekly tragedy that we all must face. There there now. It was a pretty nice summer one in NYC though, I caught a couple of hours of a hip hop festival in Brooklyn Bridge park on Saturday, which was cool, but the most funnest portion of the weekend went down Sunday afternoon. The good boys from Sunday Best brought Detroit techno legend Kevin Saunderson out to The Yard for an afternoon session of wicked old school house music. It was the kind of uplifting, pretense free music & crowd that reminded me of what it was I first loved about dance music. RAWK!
Check out some of the Sunday Best music downloads. Justin Carter assured us Kevin's set would be available this week.
I really enjoy the musical musings over at XLR8R, and if you enjoy haute cutting-edge hipstrological beats of a generally electronic and ironic t-shirt fueled nature penned about but uber-informed cyber inflected music geeks, you probably will too.
Their podcast is pretty sweet, somes are better than others, but I usually give most of them a listen and like what I hear. If you cast pods, subscribe via itunes or go here if you use another pod reader.
This week's focuses on NY artists, and was a thoroughly enjoyable little listen to some of the stuff coming out of our fair city these days. I especially dug the Eliot Lipp track and subsequently stumbled across his electro MP3 blog from which I shall surely comb some awesum.
Grab the MP3 here or visit the podcast page to stream it. Enjoy this bit of musical awesum.
Tracklisting
1. Panthers - Goblin City (Holy Ghost! Extended Disco Dub)
2. Hercules & Love Affair - Blind
3. The Juan Maclean - Happy House
4. Escort - All That She Is
5. Ratatat - Mirando
6. Boy 8-Bit - Suspense Is Killing Me (Drop The Lime Remix)
7. Jahdan Blakkamoore - Go Round Payola (prod. by Shadetek)
8. Eliot Lipp - Beyond The City
9. Telepathe - Chrome's On It
10. Battles - Ddiamondd
11. Immortal Technique - The 3rd World
12. Lorn - Of Hearts
13. Growing - Swell
