After and amazing day one, it was hard to believe that things would get better and better. Saturday night we were transported to Berlin for the evening via CLR party as COLLABS(Chris Leibing and Speedy J) turned an old 1920’s bank called the Elysium Lounge in to throbbing mass of techno converts.

A crazy late night couldn’t keep us from checking out Ghostly’s Com Truise first thing on the Red Bull stage, as he reminded us why the synth sounds of the 80s are spo near and dear to our heart. Traversable Worm Hole gave old school techno head Adam X a fresh face and sound. Margaret Dygas prepped the ensuing masses for Ricardo Villalobos as his wavy gravy Chilean-German minimal house icon finally made it to Detroit. While his set was great there a few sound snafus that we less then ideal for such a hyped set, but the crowd didn’t mind with swaggered hands in air. While Al Ester kept the soul in the house outside in the Made in Detroit tent, Ben Klock was relentless at the Torino Stage Underground, it was the perfect spot to have your mind turned to jelly. We caught the last few songs from Loco Dice and he was nothing short of spectacular as the deeper sound of Germany made it to the Beatport Stage. I didn’t know what to expect from Carl Craig’s 69 (six nine) project. I have maybe one 12 inch from this master of techno ceremonies and was interested to see what direction he would go in. Well no one was disappointed, he was belting out techno tunes funky, acidic and otherwise and had the amphitheater in a ruckus dressed in his white mask and long tail jacket.

After the festival we made a bee line to go hear Kyle Hall, Space Dimension Controller and Jay Daniel at Motor City Wine and got down in this very small venue with about 60 other dance maniacs getting down to the soulful, space sounds the encapsulated a new generation some from, some influenced by Detroit. While I would love to tell you we pulled and all nighter, I had to take a disco nap before hitting up the Old Miami for the yearly Memorial Day Need I Say More event. When we got there about 9am things were in full swing and we were treated to a live set by Footprintz. Following that Benoit & Sergio started grooving through house old and new, melancholy with soul, and had a few hundred sun burned headz dancing in the grass.

After a few taxi rides and some huffing it we made to the festival, there was talk of tornados and even a few scary gust through the festival but we lucked out as we dance rain free for the most part. Pearson SoundRamadman and Scuba, later on show folks how deep dubstep could be and that your don’t need the wobble to jack the crowd! We just missed Florida via NYC fave Three and listened to Art Department through the spin on the techmicro house scene. We wanted to make it out and around a little bit, but with a good view we got to dance our arses off the our old friend Green Velvet. Born for a performance of this magnitude hearing Answering Machine in all its glory on the main stage was all I needed to pretend there would be no trip back to reality. Fat Boy Slim came on in his theatrical style would the masses with tracks old and new from the big beat days of dance. We tried to hit up Flying Lotus but it was packed like sardines and the vibe was through the roof. I didn’t want it to end. The last three days of dancing, record shopping, meeting the wonderful people of Detroit and others from all around the world, really made for another special year. Paxahau has done it again from the future to the past this year was nothing short of an electronic dance music journey.

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