Image via Mitch Lowe //
What’s the level beyond ‘transportive’…
Adelaide producer Motez has been a constant in the Aussie music scene for a good while now, his smash hit ‘The Future’ bursting him into the stratosphere in 2017. Ever since he’s continued to push the bounds of sonics and groove, tracks like ‘Steady Motion,’ ‘Where Have You Been’ and ‘Andes’ propelling him to the forefront as one of the most dynamic producers in the Aussie music scene.
His latest EP ReSet sees the Adelaide producer follow his sonic inclinations into the deepest and most exuberant of soundscapes, mapping out worlds of texture and vibrance that will reverberate through your being for days on end. From the warbly synths of the title track to the rock/techno heavy mesh of ‘Synthesize’ and the meditative textures of ‘Give Me Space,’ the EP tracks the highs and lows of existence, and it’s a total journey and a half across its five track runtime. We were meant to witness it live at Vivid this August, but of course, with life in the age of a pandemic, we’ve been relegated to eager anticipation.
We caught up with Motez to get deep on the creation of the EP, the power of dance music and his thoughts on the craziness of the past couple of months. Check it below.
This EP is an absolute explosion of the senses. It feels like you ran with every idea you had and just pushed it to the max as much as possible. Is that accurate?
That’s a very good way of looking at it. With everything I’ve made I’ve always wanted to emulate what’s going on in my head mentally and emotionally. And I think maybe the reason why that came across is that we people working in the music and arts industry were stretched so far out. And I think that seeps into the EP in a sense of frustration.
That’s how this whole sound came about. I wanted to explore things further in a sonic sense than I ever have before.
While I was listening to it initially I could just envision what your Vivid show was going to be like, it seems like that would’ve been the absolute perfect atmosphere for it. Even though it’s now been pushed back a fair bit, how were you expecting, and still expect, ReSet to transfer into that setting?
When the shows happen, adding the visual element to it will extrapolate the idea of ReSet as an EP. The Opera House is the perfect setting for it, and I have a lot of plans for that show. I really hope it goes ahead. Just growing up as an immigrant, playing at the Sydney Opera House is… It’s the most iconic landmark in Australia and it would be amazing, whenever it happens. I’ve wanted an extra special show for that exact purpose, because I wanted to demonstrate what ReSet is all about, not only sonically but visually as well.
The events of the past couple of weeks really contrast the meaning behind ReSet and resemble a more Solitude-type of climate. What’s it been like for you watching the nation go through everything in the last little while?
It’s been so intense and frustrating. Very sad too. I was just talking to a friend who I was talking to all of last year when lockdowns first started happening. And we thought “well, we’ve got each other, we’ve got friends, and we back each other up. We know that this is going to end, and a year from now we’re going to look back at this and go “this was a phase in our lives that we endured, but things are going to be okay.”” And I was just messaging her today and she was leaving Melbourne for New Zealand because she couldn’t handle being in the situation anymore. And we were talking about how funny it is that we’re still talking about this a year on and nothing’s changed.
And it feels a little bit worse because it feels like with all of this time that a lot of musicians and producers, as well as a lot of people that work in the arts have been prepping and working hard. And in my case, working even harder than normal, because I wanted to get a headstart. But also when things come back, you have to have some sort of a stock that you can tap into. But I feel like that has constantly been set back day by day. Not just lockdowns, but having a major situation going on in Sydney really takes its toll on touring schedules and so many things around the country. Because even though it’s a large country, it’s a small community.
Now, to dig into the EP, as we mentioned it’s super vivid from a listening standpoint. You range from melodic techno to nu-disco and even rock. It feels like you were being pulled in so many directions but in the most organic way. Was ReSet constructed during a creative hot streak?
Just looking at ReSet through a wider lens, it was kind of to contrast it with my EP Solitude that I released last year. Solitude was completely ambient musically. It was a manifestation of what was going on in our lives and lockdown. So ReSet was all of the music that I started working on from then on, throughout the year. So I tried to anchor the whole body of work in a very common thing that connects all dance music; which is just dancing. Just the sense of being rebellious, the sense of not giving a shit about anything that’s going on while losing your head on the dance floor. I’ve tried to connect all of them with a sense of purpose, which is ReSet.
So you see elements of dark disco because I was listening to a lot of cold wave and new wave music from Eastern Europe. Artists like Drab Majesty. You hear a lot of techno, a lot of underworld type of music. And I wanted to kind of draw a common element in it, which is just dance music at its purest.
It’s got the depth to match the sonics. Is it an amalgamation of stories and meanings or is there a constant narrative throughout the EP? What’s grounding ReSet?
I think thematically what’s grounding ReSet is catharsis. The last year has been something that we’ve all gone through. And I think ReSet is me coming to the end of that. Manifesting changes professionally and personally. And also what that means to me as a person, the world around us, friends and so on. It’s about change, it’s about flipping the script.
Like ‘Give Me Space’ is the calmest track on there, because it still has a tinge of sadness. And there are moments in there that are a little bit on the heavier side. But it’s more about dealing with change in a calm way. The rest of the tracks deal with change and being rebellious in a louder way, especially ‘Synthesize.’
What possessed you to merge rock metal and techno on ‘Synthesize’?
It’s a very funny story. A week before I was supposed to hand the EP to the label, ‘Synthesize’ sounded completely different. It was a completely different song. Maybe one day I’ll release it as an alternative mix, but it was so different. But I felt like it didn’t fit the mould of the entire EP, and it couldn’t tell the story the same way the other tracks on the EP have. So I completely changed it and doubled down on this disco, modular techno sound that I really love. The metal elements were the only thing that kind of remained. Like last year or the year before I did a remix for Northeast Party House, and ‘Synthesize’ was kind of the brainchild of it.
I realized that I really like the rock edge to some techno music that you find in acts like The Prodigy and Underworld. The sense of the vocal being an instrument, not spoken words that you can latch onto. It’s just about putting your head down and dancing away.
A lot of the techno that I’ve been listening to leans that way, and that’s what I wanted to make. And that’s how ‘Synthesize’ came about. There’s all this metal in there. There are also the vocals from a band called Young Monks in there, which I wanted to leave in because I wanted it to have that raw edge that distinguishes it a little bit more.
In terms of ‘Give Me Space’ and the other tracks on the EP, it listens like you’re asking a lot of questions and trying your find your way to the answers. Throughout the creative process, were you able to find those answers or have any realisations?
The one thing that I firmly believe is that there are no real answers, only options. There are a lot of answers around us all the time, but it’s just a matter of deciding what the answer that you want is and going with that. I think that by working on this EP, using ‘Give Me Space’ as an example, is exploring what to do with the newfound space that you have and how you can contemplate it.
The answers have always been there, but I think on that track has helped me on an emotional level in facing it, in a way. It was like therapy in a way, whether or not I found the answers, only time will tell. But I think the answers have always been there, it’s more of exploring it and facing it, which is the most daunting task for all of us.
You end the EP with ‘New Day,’ which seems fitting not only due to the name but the hopefulness of the track. It feels like the sun is setting on the promise of a new tomorrow. When making ‘New Day,’ what new tomorrow did you envisage? And do you still envisage it? Despite everything going on?
You’ve got to have hope. You’ve got to have hope, especially as an individual working in something so therapeutic to all of us, which is music. So I’ve always had hope. Even in the angriest moments that you hear on the EP, there’s always that sense of release and hope.
I think there’s a very good point that you make there because when we talk about how we see a new day, we always think about sunrise. But I think for us people who work in dance and electronic music, a new day could be envisioned as a sunset. Because that’s when we play shows and that’s where we get to dance and have that release.
So a good way of looking at ‘New Day’ is that it’s the end of the day, but it’s the start of a new day because you’re about to get your release.
The EP also does justice to those iconic Berlin raves from a sonic sense. I know you came up in the club scene. Did you learn anything in particular about dance music in those rooms?
I think it’s just that no matter where you play, dance music translates all the same. What I’ve realized is that dance music has this tribal sense to it… It’s a tribal art form, in a sense. I’m not talking about the genre tribal music, but I’m talking about the sense of what dance music is.
It taps into the tribal elements that we all have as human beings. That’s what I realized travelling around the world and playing in different places is that it has this collective tribal effect to it. And it connects people in ways that other art forms probably don’t.
How specifically does it connect people in ways that other art forms don’t?
It has something to do with movement; something to do with sharing a moment and feeling certain sounds. It’s multi-dimensional, and you probably won’t find that in other art forms, like theatre for example. You might find that they’re a very similar thing, but there’s a lot more collective movement happening with dance music, especially when you have a small room that’s just filled with people, all dancing and sharing in it. There’s nothing like it.
‘Synthesize’ was pretty much the peak of that sort of sense of tribalism. That sort of line of, my mind is yours for the taking, it is all about, that is like letting your mind go. That’s what it pretty much is all about.
You’ve been posting a lot of track breakdowns since the EP dropped, the last one being yesterday. I’d would’ve figured that would’ve been a great promo strategy before the EP dropped, why did you choose to post them after?
I wanted some imagery for people to see what was going on in my head with each of the tracks. When I was listening to the track and when I was making each track. So for ‘Synthesize’, the two photos that I have there were from little raves that I’ve played at here in Adelaide with a few friends. One is in the middle of nowhere, and the other one was in this tiny little room that obviously wasn’t announced, it was just playing for the sake of playing. It had that sense of just community of just dancing and losing your mind.
That was the first proper rave that I played at after lockdown. The first one after the first lockdown was lifted in South Australia. So I just wanted to have that imagery to accompany each track of what I think the track represents. With ’Give Me Space,’ it was looking up to the sky, with the colour purple coming to mind. With ‘New Day,’ it was actually a sunset, not a sunrise.
Yeah, it had to because I think given that we can’t play shows, it’s very important. And as I was mentioning earlier, the visual element is very, very, very important in the EP. The colours, the imagery, just the overall tone of the EP is very important.
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Just broadening things out, It’s been four years since ‘The Future’ was released, and obviously it’s a huge track that resonates just as hard in 2021. You always hear of artists beginning to resent or hate those big songs that take on a life of their own, do you ever feel like that toward ‘The Future’ at all?
Oh, man. When we first started this, I mentioned something that I think rings true with all my releases, which is that they all are a snapshot of where my head is at a certain time. And with ‘The Future,’ if you transport back to that time, it was about the whole deep house thing that everyone was playing.
And I was lucky enough to be playing it as well and had just started touring in America playing it. But I just got really jaded with it. I didn’t want it to be something that defined me, because I’m a musician first and foremost. And so I wanted to shake it and release something that I thought was objectively a good song, regardless of what the genre was and the track history of what I had released before.
Solitude was a snapshot of being calm and kind to yourself, as well as being introspective at a time where everyone was cooped up. And I think ReSet follows that path. So I think I look back at ‘The Future’ as one of my proudest moments, and I think I’ll still look at it that way. I haven’t played it for a very long time, and I still get requests for it at shows. It is something that I’m eternally proud of, but it also doesn’t sound like anything that I make now.
Now broadening things out even more, how do you see the future for the Motez project? As well as Aussie music in general?
The fact that the song ‘ReSet’ has been received so well just shows that you’ve just got to be authentic to yourself and that you’ve got to challenge yourself when making music. And that’s something that I’m going to continue doing moving forward. And my advice for a lot of the music producers out there is to just challenge yourself, don’t make something that is expected.
So that would be something that I’d say I’ve been doing throughout it all. I always have, but I think more so now than ever before. There is merit to that concept in music, that expectation that when you release a body of work it has to be coherent and tell a story.
In terms of dance music in Australia, I really hope we all get to party and have fun and go to see events. And just the little glimpses of shows that I’ve played over the last year, before subsequent lockdowns, showed me that people are a lot more interested in challenging their music tastes. I think that’s going to carry on a lot for the next year or two.
Motez’ new EP ReSet is out now. You can buy/stream it here.
