Earning themselves a reputation as filthy track-slinging party-starters by swimming through the sweat-drenched dance floors and festival pits of this great sunburned nation, Yacht Club DJs are heading up to Purple Sneakers and they’re doing it Bruce Willis style, with a vengeance.
Ever eager to cop an earful of hot gossip from some DJs, Mikey Carr caught up with the Melbourne based tune merchants for a bit of a chinwag.
Music Feeds: So Yacht Club DJs ay, would you describe yourselves as salty sonic sea dogs? How does nautical travel influence your DJing?
Yacht Club DJs: The sweat on the dance floor is about as salty as it gets, M.I.T’s butt crack is a huge influence.
MF: You’ve been playing a lot of massive shows across the country these past few months, any particular shows stick out in your mind as being especially wild? I heard your set at Falls was legendary.
YCDJs: For crowds and all round fun, Hometown Advantage at the Karova Lounge is always amazing and Purple Sneakers in Sydney. I think the best festival was Meredith Music Festival, crazy crowd (10,000), beautiful venue and god was on our side… it stopped raining for the first time in the whole festival the second we got on stage!
MF: As a DJ is it your goal to see the punters dance themselves to exhaustion? How do you acheive it? Any special patented Yach Club DJ moves you’d like to share?
YCDJs: Definitely! We edit a lot of our set to keep the energy up (which we do cop some flack for, playing too many songs etc..). But we are committed to not resting on our laurels, we starting playing the way we do now because we were sick of going out and not hearing the songs we love and hearing 5-10 minute club tracks that get old after 1…
MF: How do you prepare for a show at a big festival like Falls etc? Is it any different from preparing for a club set?
YCDJs: For sure, we always get really excited before them and make new sets, so each one is a new experience for us, as well as the crowd!
MF: Are you excited to be playing in Sydney again? Do you enjoy playing here? How do you find the crowd?
YCDJs: We really love Sydney, while Melbourne is our home town we find people here much friendlier and willing to let their hair down, you gotta really work to get Melbournians going crazy.
MF: You’re playing the notorious Purple Sneakers, do you have anything special in mind? Have you brought up anything special, say a hazard suit or gas mask?
YCDJs: We wanna borrow M.I.T’s deck guitar (a cdj1000 that you play like a guitar!). We have started bringing a blow-up boat to crowd surf in too!
MF: You’ve played purple sneakers before, how would you describe it to a newcomer and what was your first experience like?
YCDJs: Totally amazing! We didn’t have much of a following in Sydney when we first started, so having everyone there be so nice and get us totally hammered was great!
MF: With almost every guy who can afford a set of decks learning to DJ these days, do you have to try and set yourselves apart from the crowd? How do you do that, what makes Yacht Club DJs different from other crews?
YCDJs: We have always played the songs we love that get people up and partying, but we started editing and making mashups to give people their favourite songs in a new and exciting way. We also treat Yacht Club like a band rather than like DJs. We try to put on a show rather than two dudes just standing still playing bangers, ha ha.
MF: When you’re not out starting the party, what do you listen to at home to relax? Any guilty pleasures we wopuldn’t expect to find in your CD collection?
YCDJs: Pretty much exclusively guilty pleasures actually, we get so sick of all the popular songs from being out all the time that we love to listen to anything from Pantera to Mariah Carey in our down time.
MF: With music being your job does it ever get old or tiring? What do you do if that happens?
YCDJs: Never, if its getting old an tiring we get back to the drawing board and jazz it up.
Yacht Club DJs play Purple Sneakers at the Abercrombie, Friday 6th November.
