10 DJs With Unique Gear Setups Playing Movement Festival

This year, a classic US festival focused on the creative side of electronic music will once again fill the streets of Detroit with a wide variety of musical flavors. Many of these artists are selected because they play their music in very original and creative ways, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to highlight a few of them and the equipment they use on stage.

To celebrate Movement, and creativity in music technology, we are highlighting one piece from each of the artists playing, and discounting them in the store for our first annual Movement Sale. 

Dewalta & Mike Shannon (live)

Known for being a gear heavy live production act that combines techno and jazz influences, these two producers and live performers have recently put out a collaborative album, “Residual”. Their rig of production gear includes:

• multiple modular racks (one in front of each performer – we haven’t found a close enough shot of them to identify individual modules yet)
• Ableton Live running on a Macbook Pro
• Universal Audio Apollo Twin Duo soundcard
• Movement Sale Item – Roland TR-8 drum machine
• Akai APC mini
• Elektron Analog Rytm drum machine
• Arturia Beatstep Pro
• A powered line mixer (critical for a setup with so many pieces of outboard gear)
• A rotating cast of additional effects pedals

Experience one of their live sets here – a Berlin Boiler Room recorded last April:

Maceo Plex

Maceo Plex is a well-respected producer in the techno community, playing deep and dark tracks to venues around the world each year. His setup reflects exactly what track-to-track DJs need more of in their arsenal: effects units to add delay, reverb, and generally build moments of tension and release. His rig includes:

• a pair of Pioneer DJ CDJ-2000NXS
• Allen & Heath Xone:92 mixer
• Movement Sale Item – Pioneer DJ RMX-1000 effects units
• a standalone effects pedal or two – often a Boss DD-7 delay unit

Watch him work on this setup at his own Ellum label takeover last season on Ibiza:

Bjarki (live)

Using outboard gear is one of the big advantages of playing a live production set with Ableton – and Bjarki is a great example of that. He’s using:

• Ableton Live on a Macbook Pro
• Allen & Heath Xone:92 mixer
• Dave Smith Instruments Tempest drum machine
• Elektron Octotrack

Bjarki was spotlighted by Rolling Stone magazine last August – and his breakout story in the article is pretty hilarious:

“His break came when he almost met Nina Kraviz at the end of a long night out. After he accidentally got too drunk at an early Tiësto show his girlfriend had forced him to attend — “bullshit,” he says — she made it up by passing a USB of his tracks to the Russian DJ. One year later, Bjarki’s first single, “I Wanna Go Bang,” is the breakout hit from Kravis’ new label, Trip.”

Matador (live)

Matador is another techno DJ playing Movement who has a non-traditional live setup – he’s sequencing beats on a Maschine Mikro and controlling Ableton Live with a Livid controller that was co-designed by Richie Hawtin

• Livid CNTRL:R
• Movement Sale Item – Native Instruments Maschine Mikro
• Ableton Live

Check out a live set using this exact setup recorded last year by Mixmag below:

Chris Liebing

Chris Liebing continues to be the king of pushing DJing into a more live production world. We did a classic How I Play interview with him back in 2012, and he continues to use largely the same setup – although it does seem that recently he’s started using the PLAYdifferently mixer, at least for the set above.

• Traktor Pro 2 and Ableton Live (separate laptops)
• Movement Sale Item – Native Instruments Maschine MK2
• PLAYdifferently Model1 mixer
• two Allen & Heath Xone:K2 controllers
• Faderfox UC4 controller

Modeselektor (live)

As with a lot of dance music groups who have a “live” rig in addition to a DJ rig, Modeselektor has been through a number of iterations of setups – such that it’s a bit hard to actually tell what they’re calling a live setup. In this instance (at least according to the above video of them playing live last year), Modeselektor seems to be moving towards a Traktor setup with accompanying controllers.

• Traktor Pro 2
• Movement Sale Item –  Kontrol D2
• Allen & Heath Xone:92
• Roland AIRA TR-8 drum machine

It’s worth noting that Modeselektor/Moderat have released some of their tracks in the Stems format – so there’s a chance that they’re playing with that on a lot of their mixes – but without a better view of the laptop (or an interview) it’s hard to be sure.

Guti (live)

Guti is another artist who seems to be constantly testing out new gear in his live rig – so far in recent photos and videos of sets we’ve seen him use:

• Allen & Heath Xone:92 mixer
• Ableton Live on Macbook Pro
• Livid DS1 controller
• Movement Sale Item – Roland AIRA TR-8 drum machine
• Moog Moogerfooger effects module
• Elektron Analog Rytm drum machine
• Native Insturments Audio 8 soundcard

Get a taste of what his live sets are like in the video below from 2015’s Awakenings festival:

Marc Houle

Marc Houle has always had an interest having a cutting-edge setup – remember this How I Play interview where he showed off a prototype of Livid’s CNTR:R before it came out? His current live setup seems to be stripped down to two pieces of gear running alongside Ableton Live:

• Movement Sale Item – Roland AIRA TR-8
• Novation Launch Control XL

Tale Of Us

Tale Of Us is a DJ duo that takes back-to-back sets to a bit of an extreme – instead of collaborating on one set of music, each of them brings their own laptop and routes two channels each into a single mixer. It’s a pretty unique setup:

• two Macbooks running Traktor Pro 2
• two Kontrol X1s
• Allen & Heath Xone:92 mixer
• Movement Sale Item – Pioneer CDJ-2000NXS

Magda

First off, check out the above video to watch Magda play in a hot air balloon – they recorded this set using a 360º camera, which is pretty fun to watch. Magda uses unique controllers from a collaboration – 4midiLoop – Faderfox and Glanzman DDS. Magda even helped design these controllers! Her setup is:

• Traktor Pro 2
• Allen & Heath Xone:92 mixer
• two 4MIDILOOP Versus controllers

Know of an artist playing Movement this weekend whose setup deserves to be featured here? Let us know in the comments, and upvote your favorites, and we’ll feature them!