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It wasn’t Comedy Dancing: It Was Alright Dancing: </b>Growing up dreaming of being either a ballet dancer or pop star, Cheshire born DJ Charlotte Horne partially realised both ambitions in 2000 dancing on the podium at Danny Tenaglia’s infamous Miami party at Space. Her lost-in-music 11.30 am performance in front of the 60 or so diehard stragglers caught the attention of friends and producers Peace Division, who loved her dancing style so much, they promptly named a track after her; Lottie’s Vogue.
“That was one of the best things ever, having a track named after you,” Lottie reveals today, chatting in her Maida Vale apartment.
“But I wasn’t doing proper Vogue-ing,” she insists.
“I’ve always liked dancing on podiums, I always do it if I get the chance, I love dancing. I went to ballet school and I’ll dance for hours when the music’s good. At the Danny Tenaglia party that night I wasn’t doing comedy dancing, it was alright dancing.”
Miami party frolics aside though, Lottie’s much better recognised these days as one of Britain’s most popular house DJs, routinely spinning at clubs across the UK and abroad, as well as running her own Thursday West London weekly, Missdemeanours (at Ben Watts’ new venue Neighbourhood). Living not far away in Maida Vale (one of London’s swankiest areas), she’s come a long way from when she first arrived down South ten years ago, to take up a job folding jumpers in a clothes shop.
“Working in the clothes shop was good if boring to be honest, but doing it meant I could go out every single night and get absolutely nutted (wasted) because you could do that job brain-dead.” she chuckles.
“The manageress used to say to me ‘you’ve been here a while now, don’t you want to be assistant manageress?’ and I’d be like ‘absolutely not!- I’m not going to be staying here for long’. I wanted to be in clubs every single night listening to music.”
Nowadays making more and more of her own music, she recently released a new single Superkilla, a track she co-produced with Justin Drake (better known as one half of Peace Division.) She’s also now a regular guest DJ for Radio 1, enhancing her profile still further (on top of her acclaimed appearance on Channel 4’s lifeswap programme Faking It, when she teamed up with Anne Savage to teach a young violinist how to mix.) Sitting pretty (both literally and career-wise) she’s also as friendly and open as her reputation suggests.
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): What was your approach with Supakilla, what kind of track did you set out to make?
DJ Lottie: “A few years ago I was doing loads of tracks and then I got really busy DJing and stopped producing for a couple of years, which meant that before
Supakilla I hadn’t made one in ages. So I initially felt that it needed to be ‘big’, then I reconsidered and decided to make a track purely for myself, for my DJing, which is how it is. It’s quite (DJ) Sneak inspired, with a summery version and a darker weird one and I wanted it to have a woven groove feel with the percussion coming in. Because that’s what I really like, those 8 minute real grooves.”
Skrufff: Your biography talks of you dreaming of being a pop star, now that you’re making records as DJ Lottie, are you thinking in pop star terms?
DJ Lottie: “I have started making non house music too because having spoken to lots of people I’ve understood that the best way to make music is to go with whatever works. I’ve found myself spending hours learning drum programming, not break beat as such, but certainly not 4/4 beats and I’m trying to find new sounds and go with them. I don’t see my music as pop, though I love a lot of pop; everything that I do will be dance orientated. When I’m asked what I listen to at home it’s Prince or Missy Elliot or Air. I suppose I also listen to Talking Heads and Fleetwood Mac but it’s generally dance based. I like a bit of rock but I’m not really a rock girl, I’m a dance girl.”
Skrufff: The editor of tabloid magazine Heat described fame recently as being a tax on celebrity, how do you view the fame side of Djing?
DJ Lottie: “It’s really weird, I don’t see myself as famous. When it’s you, you have no idea how you’re perceived, I know I’ve been on (TV show) Faking It, I know I’ve done Radio 1 and know that I’m in the Evening Standard each week with my club column but I don’t really register the level of how well I’m known. I recognise that I’m known in clubland, obviously, because that’s what I do, but I don’t know beyond that. When I appeared on Faking It that’s when I found myself being recognised in Marks & Spencers and the garage round the corner and that was really weird. But that’s just the nature of television and how scarily powerful it is. But apart from that I don’t see myself as famous.”
Skrufff: When did you first get into dance music?
DJ Lottie: “When I was 15 I got into hip hop and used to walk around Chester, spray-painting my tag on walls and got into loads of trouble. I did it on a wall in my house and my Mum went mental. My tag was Crash, standing for Charlotte Ruth Anne Sommerville Horne (chuckling). Those are not my actually initials, my Dad wouldn’t let my Mum put Anne Sommerville on my birth certificate but she always told me that’s your full name. I was really into Public Enemy then too.”
Skrufff: You got your first decks aged 17, were you still at school at the time?
DJ Lottie: “ was in the Lower 6th but I ended up not doing the Upper 6th form. I didn’t finish my A levels. I was planning to go to Salford Technical College to study sound engineering and I remember going on the open day with about 25 long haired, really dirty blokes all wearing Iron Maiden T shirts, and me. I was happy because I just wanted to make music. At that age you don’t really know how you can do what you want to do so you go with whatever viable options come along. But instead I started clubbing and got a bit rebellious and naughty so didn’t finish my A Levels. I wasn’t getting paid DJing then, I didn’t realise you could get paid, it was just a hobby, I’d look at people like Graeme Park, Sasha and Andy Weatherall but it seemed like a pipe dream that I could be a DJ like them, it was just something I enjoyed doing.”
Skrufff: Graeme Park was telling us recently about noticing Sasha at the Hacienda, when he was just another, admittedly enthusiastic punter. . .
DJ Lottie: “You have to be a punter, all the best DJs are like that. I was out clubbing the other week, dancing to Damian Lazarus in a dirty filthy sweatbox in East London and I loved it. You can’t sit on your laurels. Half the reason I go to the Miami Conference each year is because I get to hear other DJs and they inspire me. Whenever I get the chance and it’s worth it, I’m in the middle of the dance floor. I think if you forget that element you’ll start losing your own judgement behind the decks, you need to be a punter as well. The best DJs are record collectors, the best DJs have all been collecting records for years before they start mixing, in my opinion.”
Skrufff: How do you find time to go out as well as DJing?
DJ Lottie: “Well I’m single again so I’ve got more time on my hands. To be honest, when I was in a relationship I stayed in much more whereas now I’m out all the time. It’s the nature of your lifestyle, and I like going out.”
Skrufff: The Chester Daily Post recently said ‘she doesn’t have a partner or children’, I don’t know if you watch Sex In The City. . .
DJ Lottie: “Of course, I’ve got every single episode on DVD.”
Skrufff: They’re frequently going on about babies in the last series, do you see it as maybe sacrificing kids for DJing?
DJ Lottie: “Hmm, if I was with somebody that I was really in love with then I’d have a baby. DJing or not DJing, I’d take some time off then go back to DJing when I could. Hopefully I’ll be in a position at some point where I can do it careerwise, maybe through making records. I don’t see myself DJing when I’m 40, it’s not a good look really, but I’ve still got a few years left in me. I definitely want children, without a doubt, but I’d want to be in a relationship.”
Skrufff: Do you get many male groupies?
DJ Lottie: “I get a few, but not really, they’re just messing around. I think male DJs get more. You’ll see a lot more girls hanging round DJ booths, pouting and sticking their boobs out, than you do blokes trying to do the same thing. If you’re a woman DJing in that environment, you’re obviously going to be quite a strong person and a lot of blokes don’t know how to handle that.”
Skrufff: I understand you started out as a clothes shop assistant, which shop?
DJ Lottie: “When I first moved to London I had to get a job to pay my rent so I worked at Agnes B, in Covent Garden, for about 18 months. I started DJing doing the warm up at The Gallery and sometimes the last bit too, I remember once playing from 6am til 8am and I had to be in the shop at 10am. I could do it because not many people came in the shop, it was one of those quite intimidating designer shops, so it was really quiet all the time.”
Skruffff: Were you a good shop assistant?
DJ Lottie: “I was very friendly and nice to people but I think that’s because I’m Northern. A lot of shop assistants are quite snooty aren’t they, I’ve never understood why. Because I know what it’s like when you want to walk in but you haven’t got any money, especially if you’re young.”
Skrufff: Were you particularly determined during that period, thinking one day I’m going to be a DJ?
DJ Lottie: “By that stage, yeah, I used to look out of the shop window on Floral Street and think ‘I really want to travel the world’ and by that time I’d realised it was possible. I remember hearing Jo, Smokin Jo in Trade and thinking ‘I’ve got all these records, I can mix, and she’s a girl’, and it clicked that if I put my mind to it, then I could do it. But it took a long time for me to realise that.”
Skrufff: You said in The Standard last August ‘when you think about it, it’s pretty funny that I get paid for playing other people’s records’ and the paper suggested you got up to £15,000 a night . . .
DJ Lottie: “Where’s that come from, I’ve never been paid that much? I know where it comes from, they asked me my biggest fee and I said I usually get around £1,500 to £2,000 though sometimes I’ll do it for free if it’s a mate’s party for example. It varies all the time. But they pushed me and I told them about one New Year’s Eve when I got paid something like £12,000 but it was for three different gigs- that was the Millennium. I’ve never got £15,000.”
Skrufff: When you’re playing for a high fee, do you feel more pressure to deliver?
DJ Lottie: “No, absolutely not. To be honest, I’m more pressured at the gigs I do for free because they’re usually full of people who really know their music. If I get a big fee, like I do abroad sometimes, it’s usually because a party’s sponsored by a big company but I always do my absolute best whether I’m being paid or not.”
Lottie’s Supakilla is out now on Missdemeanours Music.
Interview by: Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
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