ITALIANS DO IT BIGGER
By Martin Guttridge-Hewitt
Movement Torino marks 10 years with a massive line-up
SCEPTICS MAY WONDER how Detroit’s famous techno festival found its way to a beautiful but nevertheless slightly random city in northern Italy for its European edition. The place is stunning, yet Turin’s regular nocturnal offerings pale against the likes of Naples or nearby Milan. But in a global scene dominated by large annual events there’s more to Turin than meets eye, Kappa Futur and Club To Club being examples of huge tributes to dance music that take place here, making a convincing case that this is Italy’s festival capital – and for the last decade Movement Torino has been central to that.
Drafting in Michingan’s finest, along with big names from around the world, the building this event calls home is equally massive. Lingotto Fiere sits in a sprawling Bauhaus complex originally home to FIAT. You don’t book this sort of place without knowing how to fill it.
2016 marks 11 years of the festival with a massive bill. That means Marcel Dettmann and Ben Klock closing one room with dark, rolling rhythms littered with sci-fi moodiness, while Derrick May follows Jeff Mills, delivering sounds definitive of the pair’s Motor City home town. Sven Väth is here, too, occupying a spot in the running order often reserved for warm-ups. Apollonia get a room to themselves and a four-hour slot, winning in terms of debauched ambience in the smallest of four arenas with vibes that are more back-room than main stage.
Aside from a handful of largely homegrown talent, everyone is a headliner – but that’s no red flag. Smart programming is a cornerstone of Movement, so there’s nothing throwaway about the soundtrack, aside from a few early issues with sound. And this is why Mixmag meets people from as far afield as the US and Aus here. Our lasting memory is a sea of energetic hands grabbing the chaotic strobes at 6AM – a scene only possible when crowd and DJs have made a real effort to be there.
