Photo by Viktor Sekularac

LWE correspondent Will Lynch offers his take on the seemingly ill-fated Minitek festival:

Had all gone according to plan, last weekend’s Minitek festival could have asserted that a passionate techno scene can exist in New York City. Instead, it was a sad reminder of how incompatible dance music events are with American laws and culture. The weekend was to comprise four robust parties in exhausting succession — midnight to 8 a.m. in Manhattan, then 10 a.m. to midnight on Coney Island, twice. It should have been deliriously fun: the venue in Penn Plaza was said to have 360 degrees of video screens, with many of the festival goers staying in the hotel upstairs, which would doubtlessly be soiled with party detritus within hours of the festival’s commencement. On Coney Island, the line-ups were a dizzying who’s who of modern minimal, and anyone who managed to get bored could wander through something called the Innovations Village, a mysterious fun-house of art installations and trippy interactive dabblings. This was to go on for two days and two nights, and close on Sunday with a lineup that included Ritchie Hawtin, Troy Pierce, Audion, and Francois K.

But alas, it was not to be. Due to an epic medley of managerial errors — permit mix-ups, failing technology, staggering lines — Minitek was a weekend awash with bullshit. Far from euphoric party people trudged through the ordeal in a sour mood, while most DJs played it safe, spinning basic techno through limp sound systems. Minitek’s promoters were audacious to a fault, and as a result, at least 60% of the festival was a complete failure. Nonetheless, that remaining 40% had some pretty good shit going on, so Minitek was not without its morsels of fun.

But none of those morsels appeared until late on Saturday. Friday, on the other hand, was a textbook clusterfuck. I showed up at Penn Plaza around midnight to join a massive thicket of people on the street. After standing in line for ten minutes or so, I couldn’t help but notice that it had not moved a single inch. A little unsettling, but I was in a good mood, so whatever. That’s when a pissed off middle-aged raver came stomping by, with quick shakes of the head betraying how utterly fed up he was. He spotted his friends and quickly said, “Fuck this. It’s a complete mess up there, no one is getting in and everyone’s arguing. Let’s just go to Cielo.” Things were off to a strange start, but I remained optimistic.

The front had only gotten worse by the time I decided to shamelessly cut everyone. The line was even more blob-like and unruly around the corner on West 34th street, and people were really starting to shout. More and more cops showed up. Eventually they started up a routine that many of us would go through at least once more this weekend — a little song and dance where the police scream “STEP BACK! STEP BACK!” and a condensed mess of people shuffles awkwardly in no particular direction. After an hour so, the cops pulled the plug on the whole thing and made everyone leave.

Marco Corola and Paco Osuna @ Rebel. Photo by Viktor Sekularac

A couple of bars later, I got word that the party was now happening at Rebel, a club several blocks away from Penn Plaza. Good thing I was getting a little sauced, because there was not a drop of alcohol inside the place. The main room was packed and smoky, blue lasers cutting across the teeming crowd on the dance floor and stage. Paco Osuna and Marco Corola were tag teaming, and the set definitely had the kind of trippy aggressiveness one would expect from either of those two, but as my first hit of techno all weekend (at 5:00 am), it just didn’t cut it. The sound system could have used some more oomph and no one seemed very locked into the music. As for the DJs, their tracks sounded cool, but slid into predictable breakdowns once every couple of minutes. On the bus twelve hours earlier, I had envisioned this moment to take place in a dimly red let room, circumscribed by disorienting video screens, while languid bodies danced, pie-eyed and sweaty as the DJs went daringly deep. That vision was based entirely on what Minitek’s website’s had promised, and it felt like an embarrassing fantasy once I was in that place. All night I had managed to keep disappointment at bay, but now it was coming down hard. I left without being there for a full hour.

Photo by Eddie Birk

I woke up the next morning and had no idea whether or not Minitek was still happening. Someone said on the RA forums that nothing was even set up yet on Coney Island, two hours into the supposed schedule. To make matters worse, the promoters had posted absolutely nothing on the Minitek website. I was starting to fear for the worse. Finally, news trickled in that some music was playing at Coney, although there was no second stage and no one could tell who the DJs were. Some encouraging words were included: “people are dancing.”

I got there around 5 in hopes of seeing Exercise One, but unsurprisingly the line took forever, so that didn’t happen. The Innovation Village was nowhere to be found. In its place, a muddy lot with white tents, a farting sound system and, again, a profound lack of alcohol. At this gray-skied, booze-less outdoor party, the mood was predictably drab. I wandered over to the main stage, where Jeremy P. Caulfield was doing a DJ/live set hybrid. It was funky and a good number of people were dancing, but the music was nondescript. Furthermore, whatever excitement Caufield managed to muster was curtailed somewhat by the mediocre soundsystem. In what could have been a metaphor for the whole weekend, a large group of people crouched down during a break, waiting for the beat to drop to do the Ibiza bounce, but when the bass finally kicked it was so muddled and quiet no one noticed at first. Eventually everyone exchanged embarrassed looks and awkwardly stood back up.

Heartthrob arouses the crowd into dancing. Photo by Eduardo Osorio

Thankfully, Heartthrob’s gloomy beats brightened things up a bit. His catchy melodies lent some much needed feeling to the scene and more and more people were dancing. He made great use of my favorite minimal trick: sitting on a decent beat for a while, then dropping a single high hat to instantaneously make it all funky as hell. Over the course of his hour-long set, I overheard at least one person turn to his friend and say, “who is this guy?” The crowd was riled up by the time he finished, ready to get down to the night’s headliner: Magda. Sadly, Magdalena’s dainty figure was nowhere to be seen. In its place, a lanky goon with oily hair took the stage, mumbling hasty apologies for the previous night. Apparently he was one of Minimoo crew. He announced that there would be two venues for the rest of the night: Studio B and Europa.

Magda reappears. Photo by Eduardo Osorio

We got to Studio B around midnight. The crowd was a big shapeless mess outside the club, but luckily it was only a few quick rounds of “STEP BACK” before my friends and I got inside. Memek was DJing, and like much of what I had seen so far this weekend, it was both quiet and uninspired. I had a few drinks and slumped into a leather couch for a while. Eventually Magda came on, which definitely improved things. She started out with Christian Burkhardt’s new track, “Contemporary Box,” one of my favorite records these days, and one that suits Magda’s style perfectly. From what I saw, she played a nice and peppy set, but unfortunately the vibe just still wasn’t there. Studio B was crowded, sticky, and the sound system was quiet enough to accommodate a barely shouted conversation in the middle of the dance floor. Having had a pointless 6 a.m. night on Friday, I decided to leave around 4 a.m., 2/3 of the way into the festival with only a handful of sets under my belt.

Audion gives dancers the tantalizing evil eye. Photo by Viktor Sekularac

By Sunday, my friends and I had ceased to take Minitek seriously, and ended up on Coney Island at 6:30 p.m. This turned out to be the best day by far. The sound system, while still a little quiet for my liking, had improved drastically. Unfortunately, the entire bill had been pushed an hour earlier than originally said, so I missed Troy Pierce and ended up only catching the tail end of Audion, who was really fantastic. His set was rich and climactic, and the crowd was more locked in than I had seen them all weekend. Ritchie Hawtin took things up another notch, moving through an hour of restrained minimal and finally goosing in some electrifying melody. I recognized District One’s “Handsome” and Petar Dundov’s “Oasis” (definitely a highlight), as well as the tiniest snippet of Radio Slave’s “Eyes Wide Open.” In those closing moments of Minitek, I finally started to feel like this was really happening; the audience was whistling during the breakdowns and dancing during the rest, the songs got more and more epic as time went on, and I found myself wondering about a lot of track IDs. It was my first time seeing Ritchie Hawtin, and he definitely won me over.

Richie Hawtin wonders, “Now where did that other 30 second loop go?” Photo by Viktor Sekularac

On the way out I heard Francois K playing Manuel Goettsching’s “E2-E4” as a post-set cool down track, which I thought was pretty classy. I was in a good mood and planned on going to the after party at Cielo, but a hot dog and extra large beer at Nathan’s shut that plan down. It was a good night to finish the weekend on and I was thankful for that. I was also thankful for the fact that rather than flying into NYC and staying in a hotel, I had endured a relatively short bus ride for $15 and stayed at a friend’s place for free. Had this not been the case, it would have been very hard to look on the bright side and have much fun. Despite some very memorable moments, Minitek was a disaster. Staffed with six organizers and only a couple handfuls of volunteers, the Minimoo tried make history, starting a long line of incredibly billed dance festivals in techno-shy New York. On my bus ride home, I realized that there were only two possible outcomes: a miracle, or an absolutely epic shitting of the bed. For those that were there, I don’t think there is any disagreement about which happened.

Read RA’s interview with Minitek promoter, Jenny Tan, and the official apology from Minitek themselves.