Dance Don’t Dance release debut album Credit: Photo by Rafael Torres
Tommy “Mot” Barger has been an Orlando music scene mover for decades. His influence dates back to the 1990s, when he was a prominent DJ during the house-music boom that rocketed our city onto the global stage; since then, he’s remained connected to Orlando’s musical pulse in a variety of capacities as a scene-maker, from promoter (Panic Underground, No One Knows I’m Disco, Blackstar/Odd Jobs, Stonewall) to venue owner (Spacebar). But it’s been at least a couple of decades since Barger has actually made music himself.

With the fresh debut of Dance Don’t Dance, Mot is at last back to creating music, and even singing for the first time ever. While formed and anchored by Mot, DDD is conceived as a collaborative project with open-ended possibilities. Its musical core is the duo of Mot and Taylor Bulloch, frontman of industrial band Pressure Kitten. The brain trust behind the venture also includes creative director Nick M, Mot’s DJ partner in Panic Underground. And Mot tells me that may just be the beginning, because his concept for Dance Don’t Dance is a cross-pollinating project in the spirit of legendary, and famously familial, industrial label Wax Trax! Records.


DDD recently made their official introductions with debut mini-album Dance Don’t Dance, Vol. 1. As the appearance of Bulloch would suggest, this project pulses more from the industrial side of the dance floor than Mot’s previous work. In fact, Vol. 1 plays like a primer of the underground electronic music of 1980s Belgium.

Opening track “Habibi,” for example, rides tall on synth hooks that evoke prime A Split-Second. Meanwhile, “Junkie” deals in the dense claustrophobia of Front 242, and the hypnotic pulse of “Respect” is textbook EBM. Finally, “Wake Up” closes on a heavy new-beat note with a thick, plodding stomp and acid keyboards.

Dance Don’t Dance, Vol. 1 is an impressively redux take on a chapter of electronic music that’s in renaissance right now. With this release, Dance Don’t Dance are positioning themselves in the rising new class of industrial revivalists. Their debut EP is a Bandcamp-only release.

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This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2024.

Music columnist.