Hot City’s tunes are like nostalgia trip to the late 80s-early 90s – acid and hip house tinged throwbacks that make you wanna throw on a Raiders baseball cap and jack yo’ body to the beat. I’ve always been convinced that I should have been my mum’s sister and not her daughter. I wanted to be a young adult in the late 80s, not babbling and shitting myself. I remember stealing the Black Box ‘Ride On Time’ 12 inch and shoving on a wobbly turntable I used to keep under my bed….everybody else at school my age was hypnotised by Sonic The Hedgehog. So I’m not surprised that I’m obsessed with DJ Haus’s (one half of Hot City) YouTube channel, DaAutopsy, and think it’s the best thing on the planet right now. Where else can you get ravey acid tracks, French juke joints and African house music under one roof?!
What inspired you to start the DaAutopsy channel?
I used to listen to all my tunes at work streamed from my Myspace, but
since no one has logged in to Myspace for a year or so I now find
myself on YouTube all the time. I listen to it on my phone and on the
train everyday so I decided to set up a channel to post tunes from my
record collection that I was surprised to see weren’t already online.
This has led me to post up some of my mates’ tracks and then other
people started donating tunes for me to post so it’s taken off from
there really…
YouTube plays such a massive part in everyday music consumption with
videos embedded into blog posts etc…do you think channels such as
your own will become more common? Is there anybody else doing this, with the same sort of music,
or are you pretty much on your own?
There is Garridgeboy who posts all the Hot City videos, I’m a big fan
of his channel…a lot of record labels are setting up YouTube channels to
gain control over content even though there’s no money to be made from
YouTube. I have permission from all the artists who’ve I’ve uploaded
to my channel, most are people who send me promos. I would never post
someone’s track without asking.
You’ve got a few DJ Rashad joints on there…what do you think about
the influx of juke and footwork into the UK?
Yeh I like it. We did an UTTU Boiler Room show with DJ Rashad, he
seems like a fun guy, we ended up at the Big Chill bar drinking
mojitos at 3am.. LOL. To be honest, I haven’t seen too much of the dancing, not
even on YouTube, so I’m looking forward to the upcoming tour.
The music on your channel is so diverse, but rave and acid house
influences definitely shine through. So many clubnights try to
masquerade as ‘raves’ though…have you ever been to the real thing?
The middle of a field chilling with a dreadlocked guy on mushrooms
vibe? Do things like that go on much down South or has it died off?
I actually used to throw techno parties when I was at college in
Plymouth, we had all the big names in the acid techno scene at that
time – Chris Liberator, Dave The Drummer etc as mostly they were the
ones doing it that weren’t from the US. The Liberators are mentalist
DJs ‘ STAY UP FOREVER!! ‘ LOL.. That music has a bad reputation for
the kind of people that go to their parties: the violence, the dogs,
ketamine, and the students… but we used to host outdoor parties on
farms, pretty special when I think about it now.
That Ross Young tune ‘Smooth Operator’ is so on point and the lyrics
are peppered with all the heavy designer brand names (UK garage
haven)…what is your haute couture brand of choice?
In order of preference:
1. Moschino
2. Iceberg History
3. Stone Island
4. Bathing Ape
If you could teleport back to a city during any musical era, when and
where would you choose?
Probably the Sixties and get some free love and strong acid, the music
would be only a mere backdrop to the amount of vibes I would be
feeling.
Do you have any other upcoming projects or releases? Anything big
coming up on the channel?
Yep there is loads happening; Ibiza, Geneva, Amsterdam, some festivals
over the summer. Me and Ben have a Hot City EP dropping on Moshi
next month which I’m really pleased with. I’ve just signed Chicago
House legend Marcus Mixx to UTTU for 2 EPs which will drop this month
and next, through Boomkat exclusively and we are putting on Dopplereffekt in London on the 3rd June at XOYO.
Check out the YouTube playlist kindly compiled by DJ Haus himself as wee taster of the channel by clicking HERE featuring select cuts by SLACKK, LOL Boys, Hot City and Marcus Mixx.
Get subscribing folks, there’s plenty of meat up on the DaAutopsy channel right now with plenty more to come!
