It is the oldest story in the land, the one that conflates apocalypse and salvation, demons and saviors. When the world is overrun by the former, it teaches us, a smattering of the latter is never far behind. Thing is, in the modern era, demons keep multiplying and saviors keep getting harder to find.

When Carl Craig and Gamall kicked off a traveling party called Demon Days in 2005, they talked about this dynamic a lot. The dark specters were everywhere at the time: the common, political and social ones in need of confrontation, and the personal, unmanageable ones, best put away and forgotten. As a momentary solution, Carl and Gamall proposed "the dance" -- a quaint new-age fix for many of today's over-intellectual psyches, but one that has worked for thousands of years. (So there must be something to it, right?)

For those who thought the pair was just half-stepping through such ancient notions, there was the Tarot-like art-work from Parra, the Amsterdam-based graphic artist whose ensuing rise to stardom has been documented on a thousand blogs and t-shirts! "An Official Planet E Selection" screamed the subhead on the flyers and posters, invoking Craig's Detroit-based label that's beloved by fans and cognoscenti alike. Here, then, was a mission both global and close to the heart. Honestly, how many electronic music parties in this day and age strive this hard?

Ever since, Demon Days has been traveling the soundsystems of North America, participating in a struggle as laudatory as it is Sisyphean. There have been minor miracles – cold nights in Brooklyn, the Bay and Toronto that have since reached mythical status. There have been historic co-conspirators – Rhythm & Sound dropping dub bombs through a typhoon in the backyard of a Queens museum, and a gathering with Detroit's finest (S2, Recloose, KDJ, the Tribe) for a sun-splashed July 4th hometown block party. Mostly though, the small victories have been simple, club-bound, almost anonymous: Gamall starting the evening's festivities and then Carl setting off the rhythm into the deep night, saving a few hundred new and old friends from the hard rain outside. The darkness kept at bay for a little longer.

It's not rocket science why three years later, such a party still works. Saviors and solutions are hard to come by, while soul-quenching reprieves are holy. The demon days are eternal; holding out hope for heroes is too.

Piotr Orlov, New York, September 2008.
Written for Demon Days Third Year Anniversary


Demon Days