This week appears to be a busy one for the festivals, who are keen to start making some money after spending some truly eye-watering amounts on some of the higher echelon DJs whose names apparently sell tickets nowadays. Tomorrowland has announced its initial lineup, so has Kappa Futur Festival – both firmly sticking to the generic McDonald’s style formula.
Alas it’s now time for Detroit’s Movement Festival to declare their hand. The initial lineup has been released, and a few things are certainly very clear already. Such as the fact Sam Fotias, the man in charge at Movement, must need to rest his right hand after writing lots of big numbers on big cheques.
And what evidence do we have that big money is circulating? Well, it’s not just the fact that the higher echelon DJs are almost universally raising their already fat fees at the moment. No, it’s the fact that Masters At Work are booked – duo Louie Vega and Kenny Gonzalez are well aware they can charge really big bucks for a joint appearance.
Exactly what connects Masters At Work and Detroit remains a mystery to us – as well as the Chicago-based John Summit, the Chicago-based Green Velvet or Charlotte De Witte, who hails from Belgium. Indeed, the most curious thing about this initial lineup is the actual lack of techno artists on it. Wasn’t Movement founded to promote Detroit techno, after all?
One of our sources in Detroit has also noticed this, commenting “I think some artists are going to be less than impressed with this. Paxahau are taking the festival further and further away from its roots at a time when techno has never been more popular. I could see Carl Craig speaking out about this if he hadn’t been booked himself.”.
And speaking of Craig, will he be throwing another strop if he finds out dance music press doyenne Annabel Ross has been given a press pass to cover the festival? Ears To The House cannot help but recall that nobody denied the original story when it appeared on our site last year – we had no denial, received no complaints about the story or no request for a correction or retraction.
Might be best just taking our advice from last summer and treating everyone as a potential journalist. The days of gatekeeping are over…
