Celebrate Ten Years of Detroit Party Institution No Way Back’s “Psychedelic Safe Space”

A certain kind of music fan will mark the date on their calendar at least a year in advance and travel a far distance just to attend – No Way Back is an event. But anyone who’s been to No Way Back, which the Interdimensional Transmissions crew first staged in a crumbling building in Detroit a decade ago, will tell you that, first and foremost, it’s a party. Conceived as a celebration of the “lost art” of Midwest raving at its most adventurous and psychedelic, it always happens on the Sunday night before Memorial Day during Movement festival, and features approximately the same tight-knit lineup of Detroit DJs, including Patrick Russell, Carlos Souffront, Derek Plaislaiko, Erika and BMG. It’s all set up in a minimal yet immersive way, with the DJs playing beneath billowing parachute tarps to a crowd that’s up for whatever musical insanity gets thrown its way.

In this excerpt from a Fireside Chat with Jordan Rothlein on Red Bull Radio, BMG, AKA Brendan Gillen, Erika and decorations/lighting specialist Amber Gillen talk at length about their long-running party, looking back on ten years of conjuring up the infamously unhinged energy of Midwest raving.

Rekindling The Rave

BRENDAN GILLEN

No Way Back, to me, is a return to the source. The source is just moments of this kind of culture. It could be imagining a moment at the Paradise Garage, Better Days, the Warehouse or the Music Box. Or you could take it back to the ancient times, where people were dancing around a fire after seeing some great celestial event or something. That could be the source. We wear a different mask for every generation that we’re in.

To be more exact, No Way Back is the mask that we are wearing. We got to experience this via this flame from the halcyon days of the Detroit rave scene, when it was innocent and renegade. It’s that renegade culture that really inspired me. It’s why I still stay in Detroit, because I feel there is anarchy here. It’s not like a lawless anarchy, but anarchy where the community creates its own laws.

This give-and-take is a beautiful thing. It allows people to totally lose themselves and go nuts, but then find themselves and reconnect on the dancefloor. The No Way Back thing references these raves that were just magical to me – moments that made me feel that that I had to spend the rest of my life in music.

Erika

No Way Back is an immersive experience for dancing. It’s a safe experience where you can go and dance, lose yourself, have individualism and express yourself in a room full of hundreds of people that are also doing their own thing and having their own unique experience in a group. The true No Way Back parties only happen in Detroit.

BRENDAN GILLEN

As I started to see the original flame fade in my own scene, that was when No Way Back came about. I was like, “Let’s reignite this fire. Let’s get people back into this. Let’s get back to having a party with decoration and being able to lose yourself in the sound and the music.”

We made a statement of excess that we were gonna go on for 12 hours. Only four DJs, three hours each, which was a lot then, especially in our scene. We could not feel constrained by Detroit’s hideous, ancient bar laws, where we had to stop serving alcohol at two in the morning. We just had to go freely into this experience of immersing yourself in the event and the situation that happens from that.

From the start, No Way Back was kind of a psychedelic safe space to totally immerse yourself in the sound and connect to people at the same time you are going into yourself. It’s like simultaneous exploration of inner and outer space.

Institute Inspiration

BRENDAN GILLEN

When I was a freshman at college I read an article in the Metro Times about the Music Institute. I’d heard some of the DJs on the radio, but the way he described this club, I was like, “I have to get there right now.” So I borrowed a car, went there, showed up at one o’clock and nobody was there.

I was in a black room and there was just sound. There were maybe three other people in there. I went to the bar and I could only buy a piece of fruit, or maybe a bottle of orange juice or water. Around 2:30 a bunch of people came in and within 45 minutes the place was full. I ended up staying until six o’clock dancing to Derrick May.

He played instrumental music all night, except for one moment where he played Parliament’s “Flash Light” and did that Ron Hardy trick of turning off parts of the soundsystem with the way he was using the EQ. Just hearing the bass or highs rock on a song I had grown up to literally blew my mind. It helped me understand what the DJ was doing, because before I didn’t understand.

ERIKA

I moved to Michigan in 1993 and promptly met a bunch of strange music people including Brendan, and started going to parties that fall. I think the first one I went to was a Richie Hawtin party that had a dance room and an ambient room. At that point I hated techno – I thought that techno was for children to get pregnant to and stuff. But when I walked into this room with all the sound it completely blew my mind.

The room upstairs had a deep cushion of foam all over the floor and all they played was ambient music. I got to experience two different halves of this thing that I knew nothing about before but that completely inspired me. From there I started going to events all the time – those put on by Hawtin, System and another group of people known as Poor Boy.

BRENDAN GILLEN

Hawtin’s events were really inspired by what had gone before – Voom parties and events with weird names at places like the Bankle. I remember a party Voom threw with Derrick May, where Derrick got so annoyed about the sound that he went and cracked a record in half in front of the sound guy. The crowd went nuts and the party kept going.

It was when Richie Hawtin saw this stuff that the Detroit rave scene really started. There were all sorts of raves put on by Hawtin and others – big raves that were also artistic. The experiences there were amazing.

They really had this outlaw feeling. It was just total freedom, and between three and five o’clock people on the dancefloor would really let themselves go. It was a magic moment, and at all the parties we’ve thrown in Detroit we’ve tried to go until dawn so people can have this same experience. No Way Back was built on parties for friends in decrepit places with weird decorations.

AMBER GILLEN

I don’t have a direct ’90s rave experience. I think I went to one party with Erika and my sister when I was like 15. I had limited experience of the Detroit rave scene. The stories that everyone would tell about going to these crazy buildings and almost getting lost, not just in the sound, but with Hawtin directing people to the right tunnels... I’m sure that there were a lot of dangerous areas in these buildings that needed avoiding.

I’m sure that there was a purposeful decision made to go down this path and end up where we are. I’ve tried to bring some of that into the design installations for the events. I think the importance of venue transformation is to make you think that you are not in a place you would typically go to all the time.

We started with black plastic, because that was a big thing at raves, and then moved on to the red fabric that Richie used at some of his St. Andrews parties, and then trying to line the walls with newspapers. Eventually we came to parachutes that were just really large pieces of fabric. For me it was interesting because they have kind of an awkward shape. It’s hard to work with them because you don’t really know what they are gonna do.

A big part of their experience with those original raves was minimal lighting. Bright lights, even sunlight, has bothered me all my life. I didn’t mind parties being dark and letting your eyes adjust to the minimal light. No flashing or moving lights, either, as they bother me. We try to use a minimal lighting set-up that just gets dimmer as the night wears on.

BRENDAN GILLEN

Thinking about the lighting that you do, I think it reflects stargazing or cosmos-type stuff, those endless free pictures that NASA puts out. The way the lighting gets dimmer and dimmer, it’s like Amber’s doing the night sky outside. Then she extends the pre-dawn period to many hours. She turns a space that’s a cube into a cave. I feel that that is unique and that allows your mind to just really go places. It spurs the imagination.

AMBER GILLEN

I’ve heard a lot of people say that they didn’t want to go to this venue or that venue, and then they felt so much more comfortable being under the parachutes and the lighting. They were uptight or even angry about going, and when they get there, they’re like, “This is cool – I can have fun, relax, listen to the music and lose myself.” Let your mind expand, feel the music and go in your own direction.

Sound On Sound

BRENDAN GILLEN

The music being played at these events [’90s Detroit raves] that we drew influence from was a fusion of techno and house. You’d hear lots of great Carl Craig remixes, specific Hawtin songs and whatever was happening in cutting edge music at the time. Things like the first Balihu record by Daniel Wang, “Like Some Dream I Can’t Stop Dreaming,” or the Maurizio records. The M3 and M4 records were major parts of the soundtrack. Seeing Ken Collier play Basic Channel was pretty inspiring.

ERIKA

You used to hear Planet E records all the time. That was such an active, cutting-edge label at the time and people played those records relentlessly to everyone’s benefit.

BRENDAN GILLEN

I remember seeing a 69 live show at a Poor Boy party. I think Carl Craig just made it up that day, because he was so “Fuck it” about it. It had that energy. Anybody in the world would have been jealous of that show, or to see an artist like Moodymann play behind a curtain or crazy things like that.

ERIKA

Do you remember that Sardine Bar party where it was Rob Hood live and Carl Craig? Who else played at that?

BRENDAN GILLEN

The first one was Dan Bell, Carl Craig and Rob Hood. Claude Young, Anthony “Shake” Shakir and Stacey Pullen played at the second one.

ERIKA

This is another important part of the story. We would go to these parties and there was all of this incredible, amazing talent. It was just like a couple of hundred people in a dark room listening to super amazing music. That’s something that we take really seriously at our No Way Back events, too.

BRENDAN GILLEN

I actually helped throw those Sardine Bar parties that were 7th City Music, Planet E and M-Plant combinations. I was working at Planet E at the time, so I helped organize those. Those were really special parties.

I left Planet E when Interdimensional Transmissions began to take off. Later, as Ectomorph became more successful, I got to travel the world and do the shows. As I traveled I got to see all these people making music that was inspired by the Detroit variant of electro and I was like, “Wow, I want to put this together, share this with people and show the different prismatic sides that people are taking.” So I started a distribution company called Star 67.

It was while working at Star 67 that the idea for No Way Back first came about. One day I was talking to my friend Derek Plaslaiko on the phone, because he’d moved to New York. When we get talking it’s really natural and ideas come out. When we’re working on music it’s the same.

We were talking about how shitty things were, and I said, “Why don’t we do a 12-hour party where everybody plays for three hours?” He’s like, “That’s amazing.” He suggested something like a hardware party and I said, “Let’s touch on what System inspired in us and do an event like that in this absurd statement of 12 hours. I actually imagine that there would be a crowd there the whole time.” Those were my unrealistic goals.

ERIKA

That’s what we wanted, though. All the touchpoints for the culture that we grew up experiencing were completely gone in the local scene.

AMBER GILLEN

We would often come across these fliers coming out of a place that would have ten to 12 DJs listed on them. I would always think to myself, “How can all these people play for anyone? No one goes out until midnight and everything ends by two. Are they doing ten-minute DJ sets?” The concepts for the parties in Detroit in the mid-2000s were really confused and really epic – all with unattainable goals.

I think a lot of thought went into how we could strip this down into something where a DJ could have an extended amount of time and take you somewhere. You see that in Berlin all the time, with DJs doing eight or ten-hour sets.

BRENDAN GILLEN

When I was talking to Derek on that call, I was like, “It should be just our friends and us and we should only use DJs that other people aren’t paying enough attention to.” For the first event we used only Patrick Russell and Carlos Souffront – people that we knew really well, had amazing record collections and as DJs were out of this world. We decided that we would do the party over and over again until the message reached the people.

Life is an exploration and you’ve got to keep growing. That was a huge part of the phone call I had with Derek all those years ago. We just decided what this kind of party could be and we would repeat it until we found out the path for it. We are still repeating it, because it has actually become the original vision.

AMBER GILLEN

It continues to evolve.

No Way Back (To The Beginning)

BRENDAN GILLEN

At that very first party, we had a guy who stood by a makeshift door. After he let you inside, you’d then walk by the port-a-johns because there was no flowing water. Somewhere around there was a giant jet heater to warm the place.

ERIKA

After the port-a-johns there was another room you got to before the dancefloor. That had been decorated with branches, backlights and a parachute.

BRENDAN GILLDEN

That was a “full circle” moment for us. Had we not done another party [after that] then we had done it. When you went through the doorway at the end of the first little room there was a square room. With military precision, Patrick [Russell] had hung the netting to fish wire he’d made and screwed into the roof.

For the sound, we worked with Jim Gibbons. He was Derrick May and Carl Craig’s sound guy. He had also toured with major Motown acts. He brought so much bass that the roof started shaking. It was snowing outside and on top of that, 100 years of debris started falling onto the dancefloor.

What party is so good that something as gross as that becomes a badge of honor? People still talk about the “leaky roof party.” To me, that shows how much the party connected with people and how much they needed it. Amazingly, every major Detroit promoter from the ’90s was in the audience. It was just amazing to watch all these guys on the dancefloor with their eyes closed. It was really special.

AMBER GILLEN

At that first one, we gave out membership cards with tickets so that we could officially say it was a private party. It was our little workaround for the bar situation.

ERIKA

We didn’t understand how to throw parties yet. We were kind of figuring it out as we went along, getting advice from whoever would help us out. It was pretty epic.

AMBER GILLEN

We didn’t even charge for the beer. We were giving it out.

ERIKA

That’s right, because it was $15 a ticket and we said that it included beer, because we were trying to pretend that we weren’t selling alcohol.

BRENDAN GILLEN

The music at the first No Way Back was really intense and immersive. Patrick Russell played these things that really brought the crowd together and got them into the moment. It was this really cool eclectic mix of things. Of course Derek Plaslaiko did an incredible set. I played some Basic Channel and some Lee Perry and it worked on the dancefloor.

AMBER GILLEN

My highlight was definitely you playing reggae during your set. It was very memorable.

BRENDAN GILLEN

It fitted in perfectly with Basic Channel. I even played a Residents song during my set and mixed my two most freaky Chicago acid jams with a Marcus Mixx song. That was really fun. Carlos lost it and went into another realm. He was super Carlos. He was saying, “We are staying open until noon.”

ERIKA

He was like, “Right, I’m gonna play you my weird Aphex Twin records and all of the hard acid I have in my bag. And I’m going to step on them. You’re going to love the crackles more than you’ve loved any filthy record ever.”

AMBER GILLEN

The music during the first No Way Back was very eclectic and immersive. Jim Gibbons’ soundsystem and the ability to lose yourself made a big difference. I think the lack of lighting also helped.

BRENDAN GILLEN

Another factor was the expertise of the DJs, what I call “Midwestern mixers.”

ERIKA

That’s like nice grooves that are never abrupt. There may be a quick mix, but it’s never jarring. You don’t get agitated on the dancefloor. You don’t notice that a new song is coming in, you’re just locked in the groove. A lot of times at No Way Back you don’t notice that one song has ended and another begun, because our DJs are just so smooth with their transitions. They don’t want to interrupt the dancers – they want a continuation of the groove.

BRENDAN GILLEN

It’s a tradition that is alive and we try to keep going. At No Way Back, we present all Midwestern mixers.

ERIKA

After that amazing first party we never stepped foot in that building again. We were so done with that place.

BRENDAN GILLEN

The first No Way Back happened on the first of December 2007. The second one was the Saturday of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival – or Movement, whatever it was called – in 2008. Our friend Bethany’s had a business printing ties at a loft in the Atlas [Furniture] building. There had been to incredible parties there in that building in the ’90s – things where Theo Parrish and Kenny Dixon Jr. were both playing. I was really excited to have a party there. We didn’t expect that party to become the thing that it did, but all these people from outside Detroit came and got to see what we do.

That was the first No Way Back party that had Mike Servito as one of the DJs. That’s where he got introduced to it. The next year we did it at the “Bo House,” the Bohemian National Home. That was a kind of community center made in the late 1800s. It kind of looked like an old elementary school when you came up to it. He wanted us to throw the parties up on the big floor that was almost like a basketball court with a giant stage and stuff. That would have been appropriate for Sonic Youth or something, but not this kind of thing.

ERIKA

That’s a big reason we didn’t want to use that area. Having the DJs on the floor at the same level as the people was really important to us.

BRENDAN GILLEN

With the Bo House, Amber changed the orientation of the room every time we threw a party there. We did a number of years there and it really found its home. It really felt renegade and outlaw. Eventually, one of our parties there got busted by a police taskforce. They’d been sent to find underage people.

ERIKA

It was a real tragedy. They had no idea what was going on. They came to the wrong party. The cops came in and were like, “Everyone under 21 go on that way. Everyone over 21 go over there.” We were all on one side of the room. And they were like, “Are you people stupid? We are trying to get you to separate.” And we are like, “No, we are all actually old.” It was only around midnight or 12:15.

BRENDAN GILLEN

The taskforce did this thing where they asked who had a concealed weapon. “Who here has a gun?” We are being busted and the whole audience just laughs.

AMBER GILLEN

It was tragic. The party was just starting to go off. They confiscated our liquor as well. Until then, the Bo House parties were really magical. That’s really the start of the energy of No Way Back.

Off On A Tangent

BRENDAN GILLEN

After that we decided that we didn’t want to bring people into an unsafe space, because part of the whole idea is that it should be a psychedelic safe space. If these guys can interrupt you, it’s not totally safe. After that, instead of trying to push the renegade aspect, I decided to work with places that could work with our hours.

Because my inspiration from the Music Institute and from Derrick May, we took the party to the Music Institute. Originally it was because it was a place where we could do it, but the party outgrew the room almost instantly.

ERIKA

It was a smaller space than we ever had at the Bo House and there wasn’t an overflow room. The overflow was the sidewalk. There was one room in this place, a little bit of a coffee shop in the front, and they were allowed to be there all night. There weren’t really any neighbors as downtown Detroit hadn’t yet undergone what’s happening there right now. It didn’t matter so much that there was something really loud happening, even though it was right in the middle of downtown.

We were there for a few years. Pieces of the ceiling would fall off on our friends’ heads and stuff and we would just be like, “Thank goodness it didn’t fall on someone who is some kind of jerk who is gonna sue everybody.”

BRENDAN GILLEN

I had to pay somebody to stand at the backdoor to warn you if you were going out into the back alley to smoke or hang out, because the building next door was being destroyed by neglect. Bricks would fall during the party. It was like, “Don’t go in this direction – it’s not safe.” After a while, although I was touched by the venue and its history, we outgrew the space and had to move on.

We just needed to find another place. I had thrown a Friday party at the Tangent during the festival one year and it felt really special. At that party there were live shows from Vincent Floyd and Terrence Dixon. His live show was this whole weird band, playing some kind of fusion of Sun Ra, African highlife and Jeff Mills. I felt a really strong connection to the people at the Tangent, so in 2015 we moved No Way Back there.

ERIKA

The party resonates so well with that venue. It’s the right space.

BRENDAN GILLEN

The people who own it and live there are so outside of society. They are true renegades. It arcs into a lifestyle vision of what inspired me so much about the early Detroit raves.

ERIKA

This is a venue that’s taken very good care of, is licensed, legal and legitimate, but yet it still has this renegade feeling. Amber and her crew can go in there and do something completely unique in the space that has its own character, but its character doesn’t overwhelm the space at all and it can be completely reconstructed.

AMBER GILLEN

It has lifts and a cherry picker.

BRENDAN GILLEN

The personal cherry picker is absolutely amazing and is something that allows you to do crazy stuff at the Tangent. The bar is a recycled tugboat and we use a bulldozer as a fence. It’s got that kind of industrial Detroit thing about it.

Doing No Way Back at the Tangent has changed the form of the party, because it allows us to have an entirely finished second room with music. We decided to not have dance music, because we don’t want to compete against ourselves. So with the second room, we took inspiration from the chill-out room concept of the ’90s, but to take it into the future with even more advanced DJs.

We have John Elliott, who will sometimes play live as Outer Space with Andrew Veres. That’s really special. We’ve also had Thomas Fehlmann from the Orb. At one party, Carlos did a special set using a record collection he inherited from someone who passed away in the Ghost Ship Tragedy. For that entire DJ set he stayed on his knees so you didn’t see him. He didn’t want you to perceive him – he wanted you to perceive the music. It was brutal. We didn’t even put out chairs, I don’t think. People were lying on the ground. We didn’t think it would really take off like it did.

ERIKA

Having two rooms, with one being the ambient and experimental room, goes back to my very first Detroit rave experience. It’s great having this other place you can go so you don’t have to leave the party – somewhere you can let your brain go free and maybe let your body relax.

BRENDAN GILLEN

The Tangent has also allowed us to test out how long people stay out. Somehow in 2016 the party ended up going on past 11 [in the morning]. Mike Servito went into some kind of time wormhole. He didn’t realize his set was meant to end. He just kept going. It was just magic.

AMBER GILLEN

He thought he’d just been going for half an hour or something. It was like, “No, bro, you’ve already been playing for three hours.”

BRENDAN GILLEN

He looked at the clock and freaked out, it was great. The Tangent has allowed for organic growth and each year it gets bigger. We also added the larger Return to the Source weekend, where we produce a few other events – a Modern Cathedrals crew event called Eden on the Friday, an event with Tresor on Saturday, a Monday daytime party and an evening party with the Bunker NYC. It’s become this whole big weekend. The space allows that to happen.

ERIKA

The fact that No Way Back has been so successful really blows my mind. It’s everything I’ve ever hoped for, just being able to connect a younger generation to a similar kind of profound experience that I had with dance music when I was their age. It makes me really happy that so many people can actually come and connect with this experience that we believe in.

BRENDAN GILLEN

The organic growth of No Way Back has been a dream to watch. To see all of the resident DJs become headliners around the world is just a wonderful thing. It happened so organically that it’s not a shock. It’s a pleasure.

AMBER GILLEN

What makes No Way Back special is the DJs, the dancers, the staff, the venue transformation and the lighting. All of those things together make the Memorial Day weekend so special. We get this great international crowd that understands what it is and we don’t have to be out there campaigning, telling people, “You should really try this – it could change your life.”

BRENDAN GILLEN

It’s impossible to describe. It’s an experience. It touches you deep inside. That’s what happens at these events – it’s both personal and communal. And this has happened without any false push. It’s just that people finally figured it out.

Every DJ that’s part of No Way Back takes such thought in how they play. It’s their prime set of the entire year. I know this because I see how much focus and thought they put into it. To have that kind of moment, it matters a lot to you. It’s like that for every single DJ playing at this party. The best thing is seeing how intense the DJs take it and how it all dovetails together without them even discussing it.

ERIKA

The musical conversations that go on between the DJs during No Way Back are really special. I’m not gonna say that I know how to decode it, because I don’t, but I do know that the DJs are not only speaking to the audience with their music selection, but are also joking or talking with each other through the music.

BRENDAN GILLEN

No Way Back surprises us every year. Every time we think, “Maybe this will be the last one,” it grows by powers of ten. It changes and the DJs get better at playing together. The audience grows and the party wouldn’t be the party without the audience. Because we actually get that renegade feeling, we get freaks from all over America and the world. It’s really special.