Tag: Detroit

Spaceships Cost Too Much – Blair French

‘Spaceships Cost Too Much’ – An amazing film from Detroit’s Blair French will have it’s online premier as part of the line up for this weekend’s Edition 5 of the Chill Out Tent, coming live from 18:00 BST on Sunday, 30 August 2020. It’s a provocative, hallucinatory, art house trip, you won’t want to miss it…

The film explores the hearts, minds, and souls of three individuals meditating in an unbalanced world. Originally filmed in 2012-2013, it is scored with music from the excellent forthcoming Blair French long player ‘The Art of Us’ released on Rock Steady Disco on September 15, 2020.

We’ll be streaming at LiveFrom & on Mixcloud Live from 18:00 BST…

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.
1

Belle Isle Balearic live for The Chill Out Tent: Around The World For Solstice

Belle Isle Balearic aka Rocksteady Disco aka Peter Croce and Blair French played a magic hour from a rooftop in downtown Detroit, for The Chill Out Tent – Around The World. As the sun dipped and helicopters tracking the Black Lives Matter protests swooped overhead they weaved together a back to back set of brilliant Balearic beauties. It’s now available as a limited cassette only release on their Bandcamp page 

‘One of the things we miss the most about pandemic-induced-lockdown times is how fewer “music-makes-the-world-feel-smaller” moments I have. Chat rooms and connecting with old friends is wonderful and I’m so grateful for that. But making new friends traveling through Detroit or making friends on my own travels is one of the greatest perks of the job.

But 2020’s Summer Solstice created those serendipitous beloved community moments again thanks to The Chill Out Tent. Phat Phil and Chris Coco orchestrated an around the world sunset tour to celebrate the solstice, with a heavy lineup to boot. The joy started the Monday before, when we filmed with Christian Lathers, Corey Boland, and Gene Wilson. Amy Kaherl saved the day by providing a perfect location to film— flanked by the buildings that HQ Underground Resistance, Kenny Dixon Jr, Dirt Tech Reck, & and the former Fit building. Heavy vibes.

Blair & I plugged in the CDJs, E&S, and a delay pedal while our crew setup their battery of cameras. We started playing some mood music, cracked some Labatts, and waited for the sun to set just a little lower before we pressed record. Once the sun was in position we were off. Despite not playing together for months Blair and I gelled right back into our yin & yang selves.

We traversed the globe musically, from Benin to London to Belgium to Chicago to Norway and of course Detroit. We played some exclusive edits and unreleased tunes just for the set. A deeply spiritual highlight was playing Island Times’s unreleased Acoustic mix of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”, less than a mile from the Motown HQ while police helicopters flew overhead to track the protestors.

Massive love to Phat Phil, Chris Coco, Amy Kaherl, Christian Lathers, Corey Boland, Gene Wilson, Blair French, the producers of the music we played, and everyone who shared so much love with us in the chat room.

Enjoy the mix for free and cop the cassette if you dig it. $4 of each cassette purchase will go towards the Detroit Justice Center for Black Lives Matter. ‘

0

Our Friends in Detroit…

Another stop on the North American section of our global Solstice event this weekend will be Detroit, where our hosts will be Blair French, Peter Croce and the Rocksteady disco crew. One of the spiritual homes of electronic music, the city will be the backdrop to their set of ambient, balearica, afro and hazy house.

On the line from Detroit Blair he gave us a personal flavour of what’s happening for him right now;

“We were recording last night on a roof overlooking Grand Boulevard, that’s the street to the UR building and past FIT distro, Moodymann, Tangent Gallery etc. Caught a big brother drone in the sky watching us, that was surreal. It was a much needed night with everything going on here. Thanks for including us in this special event. As the protests and awareness march through our country and beyond. Layers of vibrations turning tears to hope, as fears soak in bravery, we see courage grow from clay like soil. Two things I didn’t think I’d see in my lifetime: Detroit’s rebuilding and a global uprising. We’re watching the chess pieces move…”

We wish Blair, Peter and all the Detroit crew all the best and are really looking forward to their section of the weekend’s programming.

4

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑