In light of his 4 track, trance-euphoric EP released at the beginning of this year on Goddezz, we’re joined by Bristol rising star Remotif with an hour long mix that dives into his illustrious and wonderful sonic universe/ an illustrious and wonderful tapestry of sound.
First and foremost, can you tell us a little bit about the energy behind this mix and is there anything you would prescribe doing while listening?
First of all, thanks for inviting me into the hallowed halls of H&S!
I'm rarely any good at describing mixes beyond a cursory 'these are some tracks that I'm feeling at the moment'. I just go through all my soundcloud/bandcamp favs, download a bunch of random bits and piece them together in a way that makes sense to my silly little brain.
Where did the name “Close your eyes and count to one” come from and what does it mean to you?
I can't remember specifically where the phrase CYEACTO came from, but usually track titles come to me in films, books, reddit comments, memes, or moments of early morning afterparty silliness (you know the ones). Whenever I hear something that seems profound, interesting, surreal or absurd, I add it to a big list of potential track titles saved in the notes on my phone.
I only assign a proper track title to a track once I know I'm actually going to finish it. I'll think about how the track sounds and what it evokes in my mind, and try and find a track title from the list that matches the energy of what I've created. In other words, the titles come first and the tunes comes afterwards ;)
You’ve been making a breakout trajectory of up over the past couple of years, with releases on the likes of All My Thoughts, Coymix, Terrazo, Goddezz, air miles, X-Kalay and Space Lab to name a few. Do you feel like your sound has changed over this time or been honed in more or less the direction of what it started out to be?
I've been producing for like 15+ years at this point so it's safe to say my sound has changed a lottt. Just to give an indication of how far I've come, my first track on soundcloud to get a lot of plays back in the day was an incredibly bait dubstep remix of Get Low by Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz I cringe and laugh so bad when I listen to it now. Maybe i'll re-upload it one day...
To be honest, I'm not sure I'll ever really 'hone in' on the exact sound I want as I'm creatively very restless, a bit insecure and too much of perfectionist lol... but that's what pushes me to keep exploring new sonic territories, so I've just gotta embrace it!
“I’m creatively very restless, a bit insecure and too much of perfectionist lol... but that’s what pushes me to keep exploring new sonic territories, so I’ve just gotta embrace it!”
You’ve been running Familiar Strangers for a while now, a FANTASTIC label everyone should check out that’s excellently curated - how did it come about and what have been some of the challenges you’ve faced with running it? And how was the most recent night with Violet (they are one of my all time heroes).
Thank you! This seems to get said a lot, which is funny cos I've only done three releases so far, and two of these were EPs of mine. I'm definitely more of a producer than a 'label guy', although I'd love to do more A&R in the future, and I'm very proud of the Stranger Together compilation which raised around £4,000 for the International Rescue Committee. Special shouts to Maara whose track 'Going All The Way Up' accounted for around 50% of the money raised from that entire compilation, she absolutely smashed it with that tune.
The Violet night was amazing, a sellout night at the Love Inn in Bristol which ended up with me, Violet and my pal Ollie Kirk doing a b3b jungle power hour at the end - mega fun :)
Oh, and stay tuned for another Remotif EP on Familiar Strangers in the near future!
Last and not least, what’s next for Remotif?
I'm taking a slower pace with releasing music this year. I put out 5 EPs since the beginning of 2023 so I'm not in a huge rush to do more right now. I am however sat on a bunch of clubby tunes, some of which I'm going to self release (as mentioned above) on FS, and me and my pals at Down To Earth (the party collective I'm a part of, based in Bristol) have made tentative talks to start a label too.
I've also have written about 60% of my debut album. That will be a very personal introspective conceptual piece squarely aimed away of the dancefloor... I'm taking my sweet time with this too!
Stay up to date with Remotif here!