NO WAY BACK :: lost in the sound

No Way Back is not a festival, it is not an event - it is a party. What began in an abandonded Detroit building with a leaky roof (it rained on the dance floor!) and an audiophile sound system has now moved to the entirely legal and historic 1515 Broadway, home to the original Music Institute where Derrick May solidified his international reputation as artists like Depeche Mode and New Order would make their way there to hear the musical revolution of groundbreaking DJs like D Wynn and Chez Damier.

If you don't understand the touchstones of this party, it might be impossible to explain. It is a comment on a continuum. For many of us it began the 90s, searching through fliers at Record Time, calling info lines and buying your ticket at Zoots only to get lost trying to find that elusive warehouse. What was inside? Something amazing... This is our generation returning to the source, feeling a freedom and a heat within the music that resulted in speaker fucking.

Every generation experiences this, whether it was at The Sanctuary, Better Days, The Loft, The Paradise Garage, The Warehouse, The Shrine, Cosmic, Luomos, The Music Box, The Hacienda, Medusa's, The Music Institute, or Berghain. You might not even know that you have soul until you experience being totally lost in the sound and feeling all the way alive.

Every DJ chosen to play at No Way Back is a master of their medium, so deep in it that they all serve as constant inspirations. This is a celebration of the lost art of the late night Midwestern DJ. This is what makes the collaboration between Interdimensional Transmissions and the Bunker so effortless, as they both are champions of this, with Bunker residents like Derek Plaslaiko and Mike Servito being long time IT collaborators.

Derek Plaslaiko has long been the resident DJ at The Bunker, and was widely considered to be one of the best DJs in New York during his stay here. Derek has a repuation for blowing up The Bunker whenever he appears behind our decks, often outshining the world famous special guests he's supporting. In 2010, Derek relocated to Berlin to focus on production and European gigs, and is already taking the city by storm. He has held down a residency at Club der Visionaire, and made appearances at Berghain, Tresor, and many other local clubs. His debut vinyl EP on Perc Trax came out in 2010 and was well received on both sides of the Atlantic, selling out at Hard Wax in Berlin and getting a really great review over at Halcyonline. Just last month, Derek released a collaborative 12" with BMG on Interdimensional Transmissions, which you hear and read about on their site. Fans of this record include everyone from Optimo to Zip (Perlon), and the limited vinyl is moving very fast, so we suggest you get on it.

Brendan M Gillen is a founding member of Ectomorph and Interdimensional Transmissions. Brendan enjoys playing Ableton like a video game and making analog equipment growl like an acid motorcycle. His DJ sets combine studio production techniques with his lifelong obsession with Detroit radio mix shows to achieve a truly psychedelic deep listening post-Music Institute post-Music Box post-Music Aquarium experience.

Mike Servito is from a very special yet temporary and partially lost fertile crescent of techno / house / party DJing. It was a time when raves were still a fresh idea, almost felt like a revolution, and DJs like Claude Young, D Wynn, Derrick Carter and Mike Huckaby were informing an upcoming generation. If you look directly to that inspired generation you will find the lost threads of Detroit Techno, House and beyond, you will find a group of DJs with insanely deep mixing skills, the ability to rock almost any kind of party with an improvisational approach that is so skilled it makes everything seem so well thought out, but even they don't know everywhere their set will go. But it will take you there... In the future, this special generation of deep midwest mixers will be remembered and revered as the wizards they are, long after the trendy players have lost their luster.

Detroit never forgot about Mike Servito, his upfront dirty deep and bitchy taste has had an impact on Detroit nightlife for over a decade. From debuting in 1995 at Dat's Poorboy parties, to being a resident at blackbx and Ghostly's Untitled (along with Derek Plaslaiko, Tadd Mullinix and Matt Dear), co-founding the bizarrely popular, wild and free Dorkwave, and progressing that concept into Sass (the hippest queer party in Detroit at the time) with Nathan Rapport, to blowing minds at Interdimensional Transmissions' No Way Back parties, Servito has made his impression. Moving to Brooklyn, Detroit's loss has been their gain, as he has found a proper home with a new residency at the Bunker, and worldwide representation from Beyond Booking.

Erika dreams on the cellular level, or perhaps of transdimensional intelligences moving through strange patterns on celestial objects, working towards a mysterious goal. Her connection to the dreamworld becomes concrete in approach to music, simultaneously so solid and yet so ethereal.  Erika still finds time to accomplish many things in her waking hours, such as being a member of Ectomorph, co-conspirator of Detroit's Interdimensional Transmissions record label, DJing with vinyl, making music with her pet machines, and running erika.net - a freeform streaming radio station. Erika.net celebrates it's 13 year this year, being one of the very first radio stations to be an iTunes preset. From 1993 through 1999, Erika was very involved in WCBN in Ann Arbor, as a freeform and jazz DJ, and Program Director.

The daughter of a famed scientist and already running a well known BBS from her bedroom by the time she was 13, Erika is no stranger to expressing her ideas through technology. In 1997 she was handed a TR-606 and asked to join Ectomorph, and has since become an electronic musician of the highest order, focusing on analog synthesis, with live hardware sequencing that allows transformation over time and a deep depth of tone. The release of her debut solo EP on IT is due imminently.
 
Carlos Souffront is a music gourmet. His taste is rich and vast and he has the unique ability to create deeply rhythmic narratives that offer unexpected spices. He mastered his deep mixing skills with a cassette deck and a belt drive turntable in his father's den in Troy, home of contemporaries such as Mike Servito and Tadd Mullinex. Equally entrenched in indie rock, post punk, experimental music, ambient, rock, house, and techno, Carlos was always a man of many worlds - with an ability to traverse though them with an unique imagination. There is a mood to his search within sound, something that is heavy, deep yet gritty. Like many Caribbean transplants that end up in northern colder climates, he wonders where our rhythmic complexity is. For him it is effortless, while being endlessly surprising to the listener.

Carlos is an important component of the Interdimensional Transmissions parties, bringing a loose yet tight moody deepness and an ever unexpected edge. At the original No Way Back party, he demanded truth in advertising, pushing us to and then past the 12 hour mark. He has participated in the studio with Ectomorph, and performed alongside some of their live shows.

It is all too rare to find someone within the electronic music spectrum that can be called an original, that you can only really explain to someone who experienced them on the dance floor, usually just by saying "that's so" and saying their name. Carlos is one of those rarities.

Scott Zacharias is musically ambidextrous, the co-founder of both Detroit's Macho City and Disco/Secret with Mike Trombley, and the original resident of Oslo. He started in thrash bands as a teenager then moved on to space rock project Monaural before his interests in Jazz ultimately led him to the traditions of Detroit's deep house DJs, and then beyond into a truly expansive almost psychedelic take on Disco and all its weird friends. He has blossomed into Detroit's best kept secret, a true student of freeform dance music. For this year's Lost In The Sound at around 7AM Scott will perform a Sleaze set, a special kind of lowtempo disco championed in leather bars in the late 70s, usually played in a euphoric post coitus way, deeply lost in the groove.

Bryan Kasenic (aka Spinoza) is known in the electronic music world for throwing many incredible parties, playing adventurous DJ sets, launching an influential newsletter, and starting Beyond, his own booking agency. The past few years have seen Spinoza take his infamous Brooklyn-based party, The Bunker, to Unsound Festival in Krakow, Communikey Festival in Boulder, Decibel Festival in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, and of course Detroit. The Bunker
celebrated it's ninth anniversary in January.