But at the same time, it's the space that is most reflective of Detroit. It's a concrete chamber, it's underground, it's dark, so we've never even thought about taking if off the slate as a stage location. We always just kept pushing forward, trying to design it so it looks good and it sounds good. I think we really nailed it on the head this year. I'm glad you're digging it.”


Is there anything you've learnt from this year. “We're always taking notes. Our team, we don't hang out during the festival, we're all working in our respective departments, but sometimes when we happen to cross paths we compare notes. 'Hey, we should change this next year, we should move this fence line, maybe we should consider shifting the orientation of this stage.'”


Can you tell us a little about your history. “I started putting on underground parties in 1993. It was basically my first year in university and that was right when the underground scene was taking off here in Detroit, it was kind of like the second wave. Kevin [Saunderson] and Derrick [May] and Juan [Atkins] and Eddie [Fowlkes], all those guys had already started going to Europe and playing, and it was growing. But then Carl [Craig] and Richie [Hawtin] and all those guys were starting to come up, you know. A new kind of scene was starting with people in the city, as well as a lot of suburbanite kids that were starting to get into electronic music, or techno, because they were listening to industrial and electronic alternative. Underground parties started happening in the city, and it was something that really interested me. So I threw a couple of shows with a friend of mine. At the second one we had Richie Hawtin.


“Back then Richie was known as Richie Rich here locally. After a year and a half, two years, I was working for Richie throwing parties for him as he was based in Windsor, Canada. That was really a special time in Detroit because it was when the first Plastikman album came out, 'Sheet One', and the Detroit scene, comparative to the Mid-West, was so distinctly different. Detroit was Detroit, it was dark, it was hard, it was relentless. Just that whole Detroit techno aura thing. I worked with Rich for four or five years. It was in that transition that Jason and Jason and I, the guys I work with now at Paxahau, that's when we started working together on other projects and then eventually Paxahau was formed in 1998. So it's been cool.”


There are a lot of firsts this year. I know you've had Boiler Room and Be At TV. “Yes, it seems to be a trend these days to have these steaming option available for people who wish they could be here but can't. So we’ve been very fortunate that we've had these two entities reach out to us in the previous months to get involved with the event and do some special things. Luckily we were able to facilitate them and had the structure in place to let them do their thing.”


The sound is incredible here. “My friends and I that run the company, we all met each other throwing underground parties in Detroit in the early '90s. At that time, the most important facet of the event was the sound. The rest was basically a strobe light and a couple of spinning beacons, so it was all about the PA. How loud was it, how big was it, how menacing was it? That's kind of been something that's carried through the last 15 years of us throwing events, making sure we always have the best sounds. So when we started doing the festival, that was the starting point and the festival was built around the soundsystems.


How has that changed since you started? “The production quality of the festival has improved vastly since the early days. We have an amazing relationship with our audio provider, they're a local contractor. On site right now between the five stages we have something close to 500 speaker cabinets. We work with our audio provider year round trying to provide the best systems for the environments that they're in, and the kind of music that gets played on them. You see the proximity they're in to one another, so we want to make sure that through a combination of physical engineering, as well as engineering the systems in the digital realm once they're actually up and hanging, that we have as little leak as possible. We try to keep their hot spots at their prime location in front of the stage.”


What else is new this year? “In contrast to a lot of the other electronic music festivals that are happening around the country, our weekend ticket walk-up at the gates is a hundred bucks. That's anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to several hundred dollars cheaper than other festivals. We do that because we want to provide the best value possible, but with the highest quality environment for our attendees - because we appreciate every single one of them. In the past, it's kind of limited the amount of extra production we can do, so we didn't have any large lighting or LED systems. This time, for the first year, we actually have LEDs on four of the five stages.”


The Underground Stage looks amazing with the screens around the booth. “For veterans of the festival, everyone knows that space has been a challenge since the beginning. It's basically a concrete box, it's nothing but reflective services.


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How did you get to takeover Movement? “Paxahau started producing Movement in 2006. 2005 was the year that Kevin Saunderson produced it. It was called Fuse that year and he invited us to produce an entire stage, the Underground Stage, coincidentally, for the weekend. And it was really that year, arranging the stage, booking the talent, doing the sound design and décor and everything... we'd already been doing parties here in the city obviously, but that was really the thing that kind of drew back the shades and we saw the inner workings of the event and said, 'man, if we really try we can produce this.'”


How does Movement fit in with the nation wide EDM explosion? “Ha! You know, it's interesting. I guess there's a yin to every yang. It's interesting what's going on. I think a lot of people don't realize that this festival that goes on on this weekend in Detroit is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, electronic music festival that occurs in the United States. Even back in 2006, when we started producing it, there were very few festivals besides us and Ultra. Now there's a proliferation of EDM events I think the need for this event specifically is even more important.


“There's no malice or ill will towards these other events, but they have very similar line-ups. It's a very similar atmosphere, it's a similar kind of objective that they're doing musically and aesthetically. Our objective is completely different. We consider our event something we curate over the year in regards to the line-up, and how the line-up is structured and how the schedule is done and everything. It's very significant, because in a country where fads and trends rise and fall so quickly, the most important thing is that the legacy of our city, and its significance and its impact on the world in regards to this music specifically, is maintained. We carry that torch. We grew up here, we live here, our families are here and we have no intention of leaving. So it's our charge to carry that legacy, and it's reflected in the people we book and how we run the festival.”


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