Popular Toronto based electro DJ’s Autoerotique come to Guelph
Josh Doyle
On Thursday Sept. 24, before DJ duo Autoerotique took the stage at Tabu for what promised to be a venue full of movement and sweat, members Keith Lite and Diet Dave sat down to an interview with the Ontarion. We took over a VIP area of the vacant Opus nightclub, where we talked over the electro scene, performing in different places around the world, and what inspired this Toronto based duo, who are taking over the world one innovative dance set at a time.
Photo by Katie Maz
KL: We’re Autoerotique, we’re a DJ duo from Toronto, and we play Music!
ON: A lot of artists talk about the euphoria they feel on stage. Does this same feeling happen for you and how can you explain it?
KL: Yeah you can make heroin out of anything. Being on stage, seeing people react is the same feeling that you would get if you were addicted to pizza, and you just ate like 26 pizzas in one day, and that’s your heroin right. Being on stage for us is kinda like eating 26 pizzas in one day.
ON: A lot of artists are coming onto the electro and house music scene. Is it being flooded? Is this good for competition?
KL: That’s a pretty loaded question. There’s always gonna be different levels and different tiers of what is accepted necessarily, and what is underground and what is indie, and I think inside of electro, dance music, techno, all that stuff, every single sub genre, there’s now tiers of each. There’s an indie scene inside of the dance music scene inside of the electro sub genre. There’s a lot of competition, there’s a lot of new people every day but it’ll always be separated and there’ll always be an acceptance for every sort of song or artist. There’s never gonna be some sort of direct competition where you’re losing something because of somebody else.
ON: How do you stay original?
KL: We don’t, we just copy everything we hear, every single thing in our tracks has been sampled from someone else, stolen, there’s no originality at all… I’m joking.
You just gotta do you. Sometimes you just gotta turn off all the promos, turn off the iChat, stop listening and just listen to yourself. But it’s impossible to avoid influence from what’s happening right now
ON: What got you interested in electro?
KL: Groove Armada.
DD: We used to smoke a lot of weed at my cottage, and listen to Groove Armada in my paddleboat. It just took off from there.
KL: And it was a paddleboat, it wasn’t even a motorboat. We had to work for it…You can cut that response, just make it sound like it was in a leer jet, or a G4.
ON: What’s the most rewarding thing about doing shows like you’re putting on tonight?
KL: The energy from people. It’s so much fun to play to a packed sweaty room, that’s still our favourite thing to do. We’ve done a bunch of countries and a bunch of big shows, our homage is still the Toronto area, and just the energy and the sweatiness and everyone having fun listening to new things, and not expecting to hear David Guetta.
DD: When you’re on the same level as everybody else when you’re DJ’ing, it’s a different vibe. On the big shows you’re always back on the stage, so far away, but here people get right up and shake you, so it’s a really good feeling.
ON: Are you excited about your upcoming show at the Avalon in LA?
KL: We’ve done it before. It was really fun. It’s probably our second favourite club in LA.
ON: Second to… what?
KL: Second to none! (room fills with laughter)… I set that one up.
ON: What do you like about going out to LA?
KL: We have a pretty big following out there, we’ve put a lot of time and development into like the label, Dim Mak, in LA and it’s kind of like our second home. There’s a lot of fun clubs and parties and stuff. We’ve spent the majority of our DJ career there.
ON: Tell me about your upcoming trip to Puerto Rico
KL: It was supposed to happen a month ago, but I had some visa problems, and I got stopped at the border, so I’m bummed about that, but this shows gonna make up for it ten fold. Puerto Rico’s crazy. Were playing like, sweaty palm trees, naked people. Everything’s just gonna be skin.
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