This summer Tisno was marked with the debut of Movement festival, created from the partnership of Movement Italy and The Bird that have been running events in Croatia for quite a number of years now. Set in the enchanting Garden Resort on the beach, and in the famous open air Barbarella’s Discotheque, Movement festival managed to attract an abundance of both local and foreign electronic music enthusiasts that enjoyed 5 full days and nights of extraordinary music. In addition to the Main, the Beach and the Olive Groove stages at the Garden Resort the visitors could enjoy the boat parties where the great music was accompanied with the views of the amazing scenery and the mind blowing sunsets.
The line-up was flashing with some of the most influential names of today’s underground electronic scene, whether we’re talking about the fathers of techno such as Derrick May or Sven Väth, the techno queen and king that have taken over the throne such as Nina Kraviz and Ben Klock, the everywhere present Solomun or the rising stars such as Adriatique, Adam Port or Agoria.
In the abundance of great and perspective artists, the popularity of the headliners was more than evident as most of the crowd gathered for their sets. The beautiful Nina Kraviz owned the decks at Barbarella’s, selecting the best techno tracks of the last few decades. Ben Klock ruled the Main Stage at the Garden Resort with a slightly lighter version of his fierce sound that reached full sharpness at Barbarella’s later on, while the popular Solomun attracted the biggest crowd with his typical deep set that included a lot of vocals as well as the elements of both disco and funk.
However, even though expected, these sets did not label the festival’s debut. It was, in fact, the fathers of techno that really showed the crowd how it’s done! Derrick May of the Belleville Three who originated Detroit techno with Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins has been contributing to the Croatian electronic scene for ages and his set at Barbarella’s was just a confirmation why. This techno pioneer managed to make the crowd go completely wild with his textbook set adaptable to the innovative and popular electronic music sounds. His collision of the old and the new created an absolute state of trance and has clearly labelled the festival’s debut.
The techno fathers domination continued when the crowd got another lesson from Papa Sven of the Cocoon Recordings. Sven played an amazing deep yet steely, progressive yet clean-cut techno set with no flaw in it whatsoever, at the Main Stage of the Garden Resort. The Burden brothers known as Octave One had a mind blowing live performance at Barbarella’s that kept everyone dancing like crazy. There wasn’t a single person that wasn’t mesmerized with the crazy beats that kept flying all over the discotheque while the Octave One brothers kept moving synchronously as if they had one mind and one body.
Alongside the fathers of techno and the current rulers of the scene, there were some pretty amazing sets played by many different artists. Marcel Dettmann played an excellent contemporary techno set. Petar Dundov’s typical astral sound totally enchanted the crowd. Agoria had a light opening that later on progressed into a great melodic techno set. Jennifer Cardini owned the decks making the crowd dance with some great tech house. Gerd Janson played a truly excellent house set. My Favorite Robot and Adriatique totally rocked the boat party. However, there was a lack of space and focus on some great artists that were definitely worth checking out, such as Keinmusik’s Adam Port that played a great set on a practically empty beach. The cancellation of Mind Against’s gig was quite disappointing as well but since it was the festival’s debut we’ll just let it slide and hope we’ll get to see them next year.
In addition to many great festivals taking place at the Garden Resort and Barbarella’s Discotheque, Tisno got richer for another perspective festival on the rise and its visitors just can’t wait to see what Movement holds for the next year.
