Avotre, a name that alludes to a cheers and a toast to your health and that of those around you. It’s clear that label boss Santè and comrades Sidney Charles and Circus Recordings’ Yousef bring this positive (term) to their events because smiles and hugging were contagious at Avotre’s latest event hosted last Thursday at Watergate.
The night was kicked off by Sidney Charles who played a pumping set featuring heavy bass lines and catchy vocals which kept the packed dance floor engaged and bouncing hard.
I spoke to Santè briefly who was very much playing the host, shooting good vibes every which way. He was more than happy to have so many of his friends in one place at one time. It’s always nice to see a collective achieving what they set out to do. Unfortunately our conversation was cut short because it was his turn to hit the decks.
Santè followed up with another tech-house centric set similar to Sidney’s. Predictable drops and vocal hits galore kept the crowd pleased and burning bright into the early hours of Friday morning.
As the sun came up and that beautiful view of the corduroyed Spree, the name bridge and the U1 became visible, Yousef arrived on the scene and I caught some words with him in an empty stairwell. I was able to ask a set of serious and cheesy questions that gave me a decent sense of where Yousef is coming from as a musician in less than 4 minutes before he took over the dance floor.
Where do you get your creative inspiration/what is your creative process?
My creative ideas come from everywhere, meeting people, traveling, eating food, walking in the park, listening to music, having fun, you know, all I want to do when I DJ is play new music, and be excited, but also rock the crowd, but again when i’m in the studio I guess its similar, sometimes I want to be creative and tell a story, other times I want to just kick it, so you know I’m not always doing one thing, I’m always exploring my own mind, it could be something different everyday and I’m really comfortable just being myself.
What’s your definition of success?
Easy, happiness, because, you know, maybe I could be playing a 10,000 capacity stadium and be unhappy or maybe I could be at home and I forgot to pay the gas bill, normal stuff, but being with my son, my wife, and just normal stuff, makes the exciting things like DJing feel even better. Just again, being yourself man
Tarantino: Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction?
Pulp Fiction definitely by a loooong long way, kill bill was cool but Pulp Fiction its, its one of the greatest films of the 20th century, it’s a masterpiece in every single way, and the only reason it didn’t win an Oscar is cause Forrest Gump won instead, which is cool… It won a Golden Globe but for me it’s one of the greatest inspirational and interesting films ever made.
What makes a great party?
It’s the responsibility of whoever is putting on the party to exercise their personality on the people and make them feel welcome, so if the people feel happy and relaxed and they can enjoy themselves, for me that’s what makes a great party. But if you make people feel unwelcome or like they shouldn’t be there or you don’t let them in for a reason or its raining outside that’s not for me. I run a party in Liverpool called Circus, fifteen years and I make everybody feel welcome and that’s why fifteen years later people still love it.
Can you talk a little bit about the Circus worldwide tour happening in the next year?
Yea we’re doing all over the world, Santiago, Sidney, all over Europe, hopefully Berlin, but yea you know we’re just kind of doing what we do and trying to pass on our message.
What’s the message?
The message is, its great music, an inclusive attitude, and you know, we’re always pushing things forward, but again, we want to have a party where people can feel like themselves, they don’t feel excluded, they feel included.
What is bass and why do we love it?
What is bass? Bass is the frequency in music that people first heard, and it reverberates around the body, because that’s the basis of music, people started to beat sticks and stones and drums and making things out of skin and kicking things and you feel the vibrations from the moment you touch it all the way through your whole being and that’s what bass is and that’s why people want more and more and more of it because it genuinely makes you feel good. Its primal.
Yousef kicked off his set with some heavy kill-switch work on the mixer which built up steam until he let the bulls out of the pen. Those bulls being sultry vocals, bouncy bass-lines, and happy melodies for the people enjoying sunrise.
All-in-all the Avotre crew brought a surplus of positive energy to their party and I’m sure the majority of the dancers enjoyed their Thursday night at Watergate. I wish the best to Santè and the rest of the Avotre team, as well as to Yousef and Circus. I look forward to seeing what they have in stock for us in the coming year.
~Santiago Burelli~
