In teaming up with singer-songwriter Elsy Wameyo and visual artist Dave Court, producer Motez has crafted a dark techno track primed for both the dingiest of clubs and the biggest festival stages.

Called ‘Make Way’, the new single evokes Berghain over the Barossa – but don’t be fooled, the track is still peak Adelaide.

It is a major deviation from the last ‘Tez EP to get a nod from CityMag – Solitude – which saw the producer looking inward in the midst of the pandemic.

He returned to the EDM sound he’s best known for in 2021 with ReSet, undoubtedly a breath of fresh air for the Baghdad-born musician who went on to blow minds at the 2022 edition of WOMADelaide.

But with ‘Make Way’ Motez is tunnelling even deeper into a sweatier vibe – complete with Daft Punk-esque vocals from Adelaide singer Elsy Wameyo – and sees the producer go “full-throttle” into the darker side of dance.

“I’ve loved the sound for a very long time. I’ve dabbled with it every now and then, and I’ve kind of teased that slowly but I’ve never really gone full-throttle into that world because I felt like it was quite confronting,” said Motez, real name Moutaiz Al-Obaidi.

“Coming off the back of making something like Solitude not that long ago – which was more of a response to what we were going through – probably would’ve been a bit jarring.

“I had to work up to it and it needed to have the right context. It couldn’t be released just as is and it had to have some sort of a story behind it and some sort of depth.”

That story is in-part being told by collaborator Dave Court, an Adelaide artist who created the visual aesthetic of Motez’ upcoming EP titled Coalesce.

The producer – who has dropped official remixes for the likes of Flume, Disclosure, Sam Smith and Ellie Goulding – tells CityMag that he’d wanted to work with Court for a “very long time”, but needed the right project to make the partnership come together.

“Dave has been notorious for really bright squiggly lines, and so it was very hard for me to approach him going ‘Hey, do you want to make something dark techno?’,” he said.

“He really likes the hectic-ness of the sound.

“Building an entire project with him from scratch was really good and getting to know him as well not only as a friend but as a collaborator was really good.”

Motez explains that the creative process between the two was more than just emails back and forth explaining a vibe, rather the pair sat side by side and bounced ideas off each other with the music mirroring the visuals and vice versa.

This idea of a ‘feedback loop’ is prevalent on Coalesce according to Motez who said fans can expect more of the hardcore sounds found on ‘Make Way’ on the remainder of the release.

“With the EP, the ethos is a feedback of ideas looping back into themselves, and you get to a point where you don’t know where it started and where it ends,” the producer told CityMag.

“That would take the form of the physical and the digital side. [Court] would start a sculpture and he would scan the sculpture, work his magic there, and then make it physical again and then scan that again and so on and so forth.

“The same went with the music because I would make a song and give it to him and he’d be starting an idea and start visually painting it and then I’ll take from that and feed it back into the song. It was this cool idea of feedback loops all over the EP conceptually, sonically, everything.”

With Elsy on the vocals, the latest track is as Adelaide as it gets. This was important to the producer, who said it had to be “rooted in a local community”.

“You have to start strong locally and go from there,” he said.