AYLI Relaunches Detroit Techno Series in San Francisco

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AYLI revives year-long Detroit techno series

San Francisco collective As You Like It is expanding its Detroit-focused Unabridged series into a year-long 2026 program, opening February 27 with a panel and club double-header that foregrounds the city's Black and queer lineage. "The Midwest Queer Underground" at The Stud features Marke B., Stacey "Hotwaxx" Hale, and The Blessed Madonna before an all-night Blessed Madonna b2b Mike Servito set at Public Works—marking ten years since their first back-to-back. (Original source)

March bookings pair archival context with live performance: a 30th-anniversary tribute to Jeff Mills' Live At the Liquid Room at 1015 Folsom precedes his Metropolis Metropolis film score at Palace of Fine Arts, while Moodymann and Marcellus Pittman close the opening run with a five-hour daytime set at Oakland's 7th West. AYLI founder Jeremy Bispo frames the program as corrective: "Detroit techno is America's story... yet its origins remain under-acknowledged at home." (Unabridged SF)

Panels, film screenings, and daytime sets

Unabridged structures each event to frame Detroit techno as cultural archive and living conversation. A free "Tales of Detroit Through Vinyl" mixer at Bar Shiru in Oakland positions selectors In Bloom, Joe Rice, and DJ Kelleyjane to trace the city's influence through records. The program folds listening sessions, cinema, and panel discussion into the club calendar, treating context as inseparable from the dance floor.

The series opens with Marke B. moderating "The Midwest Queer Underground" alongside Stacey "Hotwaxx" Hale and The Blessed Madonna at The Stud, locating techno's origins within Black and queer Midwestern networks before the three move to Public Works for the night. March 5 pairs a screening of Jeff Mills' Live At the Liquid Room—co-presented with Throttle—with a Mills DJ set at 1015 Folsom, then follows with his Metropolis Metropolis live score at Palace of Fine Arts, bookending archival celebration with contemporary reinterpretation. (Unabridged: Detroit Incoming - SoundCloud)

Bridging Black queer roots and club culture

Organizer Jeremy Bispo frames Unabridged as a corrective: "Detroit techno is America's story. Black and brown Americans invented a new genre of music. It's been exported worldwide, yet its origins remain under-acknowledged at home." That positioning explains why As You Like It structured the series with educational architecture—a free vinyl-tracing mixer, a panel co-hosted by Marke B., and film screening before any headliner plays—rather than booking straight club tours.

Sources

• Original source
• Unabridged SF (2026-01-06)
• Unabridged: Detroit Incoming - SoundCloud (2025-12-25)
• AYLI - As You Like It (2025-11-20)

How we reported this

We reviewed the original coverage from EGNews and cross-checked key details against the sources above. If something is unclear or changes after publication, we’ll update this post.

About the author

Tom Rander