Paxahau’s Favorite Movement Detroit Sets

When Paxahau took over Detroit’s annual electronic music festival, they gave it a new name: Movement. For the past ten years, the events team has guided the festival to new heights, with an emphasis on diverse programming, unexpected headliners and hometown heroes. In the lead-up to Movement 2016, we asked the team behind Paxahau to pick some of their favorite sets from their decade at the helm of one of the best festivals in dance music.

On Saturday, April 23rd, you can listen in to RBMA Radio to hear them all: back-to-back-to-back as part of a Movement Festival Marathon on the all-new RBMA Radio. Sign up for an invite code here and log in to listen.

Chloe Harris, 2009 (1:00 PM EDT)

Jason Clark, Paxahau, Creative Director

I’ve always tried to champion the experimental, downtempo, ambient sides of electronic music – so I was pleased that we were able to bring in Chloe as she was on the cutting edge of that scene for so long with her B-sides show on Proton Radio.

Chloe Harris

I opened that day, so it was pretty early still. I was facing the water, so that’s pretty magical in itself. One thing I love about Movement – maybe because I have kids – but I love that there’s little kids there. I feel like there’s something different about Movement. I don’t know what it is. People are really up for anything. It’s a real weird, cool community, and the further you push yourself, the more they like it.

Tycho, 2008 (3:00 PM EDT)

Sam Fotias, Paxahau, Director of Operations

This is a personal favorite of mine. I had been following his then–very young career, and was really looking forward to hearing his dreamscape type of music over by the waterfront on a perfect summer day. It was a great performance.

Phuture, 2015 (3:45 PM EDT)

Sam Fotias

Seeing these creators with all of their gear play live was a dream come true. So many classics, that we consider the foundation of our music and culture, just pummeling the audience. It was a true education session.

DJ Pierre

I was on a European tour at the time, and I had just finished hitting about three different countries and DJing at gigs. We finished a gig in the U.K. at 5 AM and had to catch a flight at 8 back to Detroit. When we landed, we had about 30 minutes before showtime.

We eventually get to Hart Plaza, and I’m running. Spanky’s already up there on stage, waiting. I’m changing into my Phuture shirt that my manager gave me when I got there. Usually before I start, I like to mentally assess what’s going on, get comfortable with the scene. Spank and I communicate because, most likely, we haven’t done a show in a month’s time, because I’m off DJing. This time, we didn’t get a chance to go over little changes here and there. After sets I’m usually critical. That day, though, I felt really good, because I knew it was such a spiritual moment. I was really happy with it. But when I got a chance to listen to it just recently I was like, “Huh, I forgot about that!”

J.Phlip, 2013 (4:30 PM EDT)

J.Phlip

I think I took, like, three flights to get to Detroit, so I hadn’t really gotten much sleep, and then played at TV Bar for a night and went to Old Miami after that. I was super-duper tired. I was just hanging on by a thread, so I decided to go to the hotel and sleep. I took a three hour nap and woke up with my phone going totally crazy. Text messages and missed calls. “Urgent, do you want to sub for Boys Noize?”

I was just like, “What? Am I awake, am I dreaming? What’s happening here?” I was really glad I had taken a nap, because I think I just had maybe four hours from that moment until I had to play. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was impossible, so I just ordered a Bloody Mary and started listening to music and trying to stay calm. I remember that I was in the bathroom getting ready, and I dropped the drink on the floor and just took a towel and swept all the glass underneath somewhere. I just couldn’t deal with it. I ended up playing a lot of my favorite things because I only had a few hours to prepare.

Chuck Flask, Artist Coordinator

Boys Noize was forced to cancel last minute because he got sick. We came up with the idea to have Jess fill his spot. It was her birthday, and what better way to celebrate than a headline slot on the final day of the festival?! I must have called her about a 100 times; had her agent go over to her hotel room to wake her up and get her prepped for the special news. In the end, she destroyed the Beatport stage that night. This set is still one of the most talked-about sets of that year.

Derek Plaslaiko, 2015 (6:00 PM EDT)

Sam Fotias

Derek has been a close friend of Paxahau for almost 20 years. He ALWAYS plays a great set and brings his A-game to every performance. This particular set was a bit of a homecoming, as he had his recently-wedded wife with him and his baby son, who he joyfully hoisted up during his set and showed to a loving and enthusiastic home crowd. It was a very heartwarming and endearing moment that could have only happened here.

Derek Plaslaiko

To get myself in the right head space beforehand, I was just going through my thumb drive, and I was like, “What am I going to open with?” Then I found the coin toss scene from No Country for Old Men, so I thought that would be a cool thing to start with, while I figured out what’s going to come after that. I let it go for a little bit too long. I don’t remember what was happening at that time that made me think that was a good idea, but yeah, I played almost the whole thing, and then snapped in the newest John Tejada record that was blowing my mind at the time, called “Dramamine.”

Typically at the festival you start looking out at the crowd and see people that you haven’t seen in years, dancing and being really happy. Looking to my left, there was my wife and my son, who was 16 months old at the time. It always is emotional, but then looking out and seeing him there, too... Near the end of the set, I was starting to well up a little bit and I was just like, “You know what? Screw it,” and went and pulled him up on stage. I just wanted him to see what his daddy was seeing from the stage.

Deepchord Presents Echospace, 2011 (7:00 PM EDT)

Sam Fotias

Rod Modell is, unfortunately, probably one of the most underrated Detroit artists out there. His dark and ethereal dub techno is amazing, and so good to listen to while on road trips or zoning out while at work in the office.

Rod Modell

It’s kind of strange and unusual to play a festival somewhere and leave the venue and be home in 30 or 40 minutes. Movement is in my hometown, which really made this set special. Steve [Hitchell] and I were playing the Underground Stage, which is literally underground. I like that one because it’s the most isolated from the others. At that festival, there tends to be a lot of audio bleed. This underground stage is kind of isolated, and I like that.

You never know what you’re going to get in terms of, “Are they going to get this?” That particular day, I remember most of the audience was getting it. It wasn’t a huge crowd, but it was a crowd of people that were really passionate. I think that’s better than having a huge crowd of people that just don’t understand it any day of the week.

Photek, 2012 (8:00 PM EDT)

Sam Fotias

Photek had to cancel the year before because he was sick, so we brought him back in 2012 and he didn’t disappoint. He is an artist that has been breaking musical barriers since the ’90s. It’s always so exciting for us to bring these acts in to perform in front of our crowd, because they truly love music and artists who love to make music.

Moritz von Oswald Trio feat. Carl Craig, 2010 (9:00 PM EDT)

Moritz von Oswald

The trio is usually me, Vladislav Delay and Max Loderbauer. In Detroit we had Carl Craig join us. Carl brought a special atmosphere. This set was really special because, in the middle, the power went out because of a storm. Everything was gone for about, I don’t remember, maybe five or six minutes. The rain was going directly, more or less, onstage. It was a bit dangerous, but the festival was prepared for these things. Then we started again, and it went even better!

Jason Clark

It was amazing to have such a legendary artist who had influenced us so deeply present his project here. Combine that with the fact that Carl Craig would be performing with him live made this electronic / jazz really hit home at the festival.

Spacetime Continuum, 2011 (10:00 PM EDT)

Sam Fotias

Jonah Sharp is another one of those artists that has been consistently producing great music since the 1990s. This particular project of his was instrumental in bringing many of us who loved ambient music together. Such amazingly solid music to relax to.

Spacetime Continuum

This was my second time playing Movement (the first being the very first DEMF, back in 2000). I decided to chill things out a bit for my set, which was scheduled for mid-afternoon at the underground Torino stage on Saturday. I started off with some of my older ambient material, and gradually ramped things up to some more full-on dance stuff. I would call this set “semi-live, semi-DJ” in that I was using Ableton Live for some playback along with most drums from a live Roland TR-808, synth sounds from Roland Juno-106 (Carl Craig’s personal one!) and tons of sounds coming from a Nord Modular. All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience.