Movement to Showcase Adelaide’s Electronic Music Past and Future

Once this country’s groundbreaking electronic music city thanks to labels such as Juice Records and Dirty House (and their globally acclaimed producer and DJ in HMC), Adelaide was known in some quarters as Australia’s Detroit (or A-troit for short) for its Downunder house and techno innovators.

Movement Electronic Music Festival will honour Adelaide’s electronic music history as well as showcase the new breed of producers for a multi-genre three-room party and industry forum at the Crown & Sceptre on Saturday, October 15. Featuring DJs and electronic music acts such as Damien Donato (Juice Records), James Curd, Jorge Watts, Phil Rogers, Zeequil, as well as local hip hop royalty in Delta, Movement will show the breadth of local electronic and club music as well as other genres loosely associated with EDM.

Movement, which is organised by Adamek, veteran local DJ Tom Cotter and Phil Hardy along with FutureSounds Adelaide and Ashcats Soundsystem, will begin with a Fresh 92.7 supported Q+A-style forum, ‘Fresh Air Open House presents Adelaide Electronic Producers Forum, from 6pm.

“I think EDM suffers a bit in the popular press in Australia as being all about lights and hedonism,” says Adamek on the importance of including a forum aspect as part of Movement. “It’s time to engage with words around the form. I think it also represents a maturation of EDM ascending to its rightful place in the musical canon, if you will.”

Adamek, who is also a dancer, choreographer and actor and is currently finishing her PhD on Adelaide dance music culture) says Movement is an evolution of the 2014 warehouse event Percussions. Adamek was recruited by Driller Jet Armstrong to evolve that party to an art event, so it “wasn’t just a bunch of people standing around a cold warehouse staring at a DJ”.

“We remembered how vital the early dance party scene was and how central a total creative environment was, bringing together a range of artists from different disciplines to express and create to the backdrop of this amazing new music,” Adamek says of Percussions. “Much of this was being driven at the time, the early 1990s, by the knowledge and celebration of Adelaide’s contribution to that music.”

Adamek, who wants to make Movement an annual event, says the objectives of Movement are similar to that of Percussions, as she wants to “start a dialogue between the pioneers of the scene and the new producers – to start acknowledging and representing the spectrum of electronic dance music we make in Adelaide that spans 25 years”.

“It was Tom Cotter who came to me and proposed a festival that celebrated Adelaide’s legacy outside the well-known rock ‘n’ roll narrative,” she says. “So this developed the project on from Percussions (which was based around local label UNTZZ 12inch) and with Patrick’s Futuresounds project came the potential to harness much of the incredible electronic music that was being made here now.”

Movement Electronic Music Festival
Crown & Sceptre
Saturday, October 15, doors open 6pm
facebook.com/movementadelaide