Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.
- Byung Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals
The dank basement is dark. You were explicitly instructed to enter from the back alley to avoid the attention of authorities. From the outside, it could be an ordinary, closed building at Midnight. But inside, nothing could be further from the case.
The gutted storage space is filled to the brim with anonymous dancers, convulsing and contorting their bodies with deadly serious urgency. Surrounding the four corners of the room are mountainous speakers courtesy of Jim Gibbons AVS. They emit slinky, dubby, crushing techno. Total sensory immersion. The ritual is underway.
When I arrive at this proper Detroit afters affair, local stalwart Tammy Lakkis, who has played this space numerous times before with the Sleep Olympics crew, is hammering the underground room with thundering techno rippers. One of the city’s most versatile, there isn't a space Lakkis can’t rock. An ideal way to open things up.
Next up, out-of-town guest Paul Fleetwood begin a long-awaited return to Detroit set. An underground veteran from Pittsburgh, Fleetwood flexed his chops over a 3-hour marathon of minimal, dub, industrial, and other psychedelic assortments. “He sounds like Detroit,” someone commented. And indeed, he fit right in. We hope he comes back soon.
Finishing the night off to great anticipation was Mike Servito. The house junky had cut his teeth in Detroit under the tutelage of Mike Huckaby and found his voice in New York City as a resident of The Bunker. Nowadays, his sets at Interdimensional Transmissions’ No Way Back are the stuff of legend. Now he was here, playing a proper after-hours spot.
Servito’s fast hands set to work, launching into a pulverizing set of scorched, jacking acid. The sound of 909s on fire completed the ritual as the crowd hit on collective trance, singularity. “Community without the need to communicate,” Byung Chul-Han had once said. Touching from a distance. Union through sound. We need more rituals if we are to survive.
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