Christopher Culver
This is a documentary about Delta Heavy, the eight-week US tour DJs Sasha and John Digweed embarked upon in 2002 which sought to bring progressive house music to the American masses far from clubbing centres. This tour was a new kind event, the first time that dance music came to stadium venues and drew such crowds.The documentary presents the logistics of the tour, interviews the staff (older folks much more used to rock tours), and describes life on the tour bus and in hotels. Sasha and Digweed are interviewed at a number of different stops on the tour, as is warm-up DJ Jimmy Van M who came up with the concept of this tour. I really like how the progressive house scene is shown as simply a way to unwind in the company of other music fans, and not as some kind of drugged-up haze, a stereotype that other documentaries of this era (such as Global Underground's Transmission 00:1) ended up reinforcing.The DVD was released in 2005, and I saw it in 2007. Five years after the tour, one had a new perspective on its content. Instead of bringing progressive house music more into the American mainstream, 2002 turned out to be the year that the scene diminished, driving progressive house back into clubs. The rise of electro has further settled the genre with a dance-music cognoscenti. The final words of the documentary, spoken by Sasha and foretelling a massive explosion in the American scene, now seem ironic. Dance music did explode in the US, but it wasn't this kind of dance music.As others have complained, there is little music on the disc. There is constantly some track playing in the background in each scene, and you'll hear snippets of Bedrock's "Heaven Scent", Sasha's "Bloodlock", and others. Nonetheless, there is no continuous DJ mix from the tour.
