Motez On Community & Warm Dancefloors: 'When I Found My People Here, Everything Started To Click'

Motez

Busily working away in his Adelaide studio is where you’ll find Motez most days, let’s be honest.

But with a few new songs to drop and a festival of lights, art and music to co-produce, it wouldn’t be a stretch to ponder if the producer and artist were burning the candle at both ends and indeed camping out in his creative space to ensure his many commitments are met.

“I'm at my studio, which is, you know, a regular occurrence every day lately, weirdly enough,” he laughs.

Behind that understatement is a packed schedule – new releases lined up, major events unfolding, and a creative mindset that’s constantly evolving.

“I've got the next song that's coming out, I think, mid-…  I can't actually remember when it's out! I think it's early July. I've got like two songs in quick succession and getting set for the big day.”

The big day in question is Supersonic, an immersive lock-in night of music taking over Hindley Street Music Hall as part of the art, light, music, and technology celebration Illuminate Adelaide, happening July 1-19.

Established in 2021 by co-founders and creative directors Rachael Azzopardi and Lee Cumberlidge, Illuminate transforms the Adelaide CBD and regions into a riot of colours, sounds and experiences.

In 2025, the festival unveiled Supersonic, with Motez at the helm as its curator and a performer.

“This year I'm just curating – but I will be on the dance floor at some point nevertheless,” he stresses.

“If you really boil it down, being a DJ is really a form of curation,” he says. “You’re shaping a night through your set. So being a curator is like doing that, but across the entire event, with other artists helping you tell that story.”

“Being a curator solely this year also comes from a place of wanting to bring someone who is a proud South Australian like me and wants this city to do really, really well, especially the dance and club music scene.

“I kind of wanted to be selfish, with the help of Illuminate, and bring people to Adelaide in this particular capacity, in a particular way that would light up the city during the winter months.”

The city itself is no stranger to being a hospitable host; being one of Australia’s foodie playgrounds, it’s certainly not a difficult sell to draw punters to Supersonic. But, in terms of the musical line-up, the winters are beyond cold, so handpicking a selection of local electronic acts to warm things up, who were not heading off to play European summer shows, presented Motez with some challenges.

“Narrowing it down to people that not only are available in Australia at that time of year, but also willing to travel if they were already elsewhere – I mean, sometimes you have to be a bit malleable and reactive to what the situation is, and see where you can kind of plug in and present something that represents the Supersonic sound in the best way possible,” he says.

“Having artists like Khuevo, Moktar, Soju Gang, and more in the line-up is incredible. With last year’s Housing Boom [festival], it was nice to give a nod to the communities in Adelaide that make it happen throughout the year, and who don't have a massive backing. They just do it for the love.”

Originally from Iraq, Motez came to Australia as a teenager in 2006, and despite always making music, the genres he experienced in his original home country pretty much covered everything – except electronic music. But soon after arriving in Adelaide, as a fierce creative with a fresh start, he swiftly found his people and a new world to create in.

And once he started, he didn’t stop. Since first releasing his ambient brand of electronica in 2010, he has pumped out scores of singles, EPs and remixes that have kept bodies moving, and even attracted the likes of Red Bull for a record-and-remix sampling session from trackside at Melbourne’s Australian Grand Prix last year.

And now he’s celebrating a milestone that underscores his whole journey, originally shaped by migration but solidified by a sense of identity and belonging.

“I’m very, very proud of Adelaide,” he says. “I didn’t grow up here, but in a couple of weeks it’ll be 20 years since I moved to Australia,” he explains.

“There wasn’t really a community for that where I came from, so finding it here was huge.

“Music comes second nature to me; I’ve always made music. But what I didn’t have before was that sense of belonging. When I found my people here, everything started to click.

“That innate sense as human beings of wanting to belong. I think a lot of immigrants have the same sense of wanting to find their feet in their new country and contribute. Through that, music was the channel for me.

“When I started plugging into communities and chatting to people, my music started to kind of blossom in a way.

“The best part of being part of a community within a smaller community is that they champion what you make, but also you have this sense of belonging that you are part of something greater, which is very important to making musical art and culture in general.”

It’s always interesting to share the lens of someone who was not born in Australia but arrived here later in life. One of the things Motez found immediately intriguing, even puzzling, about Australia – a younger nation than most – was a sense of exuberant defiance that was “baked into the culture” and, in turn, our music.

“I think one thing that I noticed about Australia – which for me was a really scary bit when I moved here – is that music and musical expression and artistic expression is kind of baked into the culture,” he explains.

“There's something sort of innate Australian culture that wants to project things that are exciting. So that's why you find us in the forefront of a lot of things that are exciting, that sound exciting, sound sort of rebellious in a way.

“The moment the cycle of music kind of pivots to that, you find a lot of these Australian artists coming up to the front because that's in our nature of being an exciting, useful bunch of people, even for us oldies!”

Motez’s Supersonic will take place as part of this year’s Illuminate Adelaide on Saturday, 18 July. Tickets are available here.