Motor City techno pioneers Derrick May, Carl Craig and others held the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival over a decade ago, launching a sister event in Turin, Italy, in 2006. With local DJ Guanluca Pandullo, aka I-Robots, taking the reins, the event has grown into one of the biggest dates in the dance music calendar, attracting the world’s top DJs every year.
Last year, Pandullo put together an acclaimed compilation to celebrate the festival’s fifth anniversary. It was successful enough to merit a second set for this year’s event: two discs running a gamut of house and techno styles, from Berlin’s Steffi homaging the classic Chicago house sound on Arms, to Detroit behemoths Robert Hood and Derrick May closing the set – the latter with Icon, whose haunting melancholy now sounds like a lament for the whole world.
Other names, including, Vath & Rother, Ellen Alien & Apparat, Motor City Drum Ensemble, Henrik Schwarz, Ray Mang & Nathan Detroit, Soulwax, Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir and Ame & Dixon are represented by past or present outings, qualifying if they fit the mood of flowing, emotional innovation. On top of all this, Pandullo has mixed the tracks into a two-hour (digital only) rollercoaster.
