Automaticamore is a Toronto-based DJ known for their eclectic and vibrant sets, blending genres like Italo disco, new wave, and classic house to create an unforgettable dance floor experience. With a deep passion for vinyl and a unique ability to curate both nostalgic and forward-thinking sounds, Automaticamore has become a staple in Toronto’s underground music scene.
I just re-listened to your mix and it really struck me how the music that you chose feels like you're bringing the world in. I wonder if that resonates with you and if that's something that you strive for as a DJ?
⎯⎯⎯ It's actually interesting because I think this mix is somewhat anomalous in my repertoire of DJing. Normally what I play is Italo disco, which can be the most vapid music in many ways – which is also partly why I love it. It isn't serious. I appreciate that something can be fun and light-hearted, whereas a lot of dance music tends towards seriousness. But in this case, with this particular mix, I wanted to branch out because my musical tastes span beyond just Italo disco, thankfully. That might actually make me a bit nutty if that's the only thing I listened to. So, in this case, I was hoping to capture the theme that this is for working to. This isn't something that you're necessarily going to be partying to. I didn't want to create something that was jarring or too obvious if you're trying to concentrate on something else. I just wanted to span the gamut of things that I listen to that I normally never get to play. So there's a bit of kosmiche that's happening in there, which I love, and, to your point of bringing the world, I think there’s samplings from across different genres and time periods as well, which is outside of my norm. I usually just stick to the 1980s. So that definitely resonates.
I encountered some of your Italo disco mixes earlier, but it didn't click that that is your main repertoire. How did you land on Italo disco as your mainstay? Is it just what gets people moving on the dance floor, or is it what you like to play in a live setting?
⎯⎯⎯ I love to play it in a live setting! I don't think it's particularly popular here. I know this as a local DJ: most people are not aware of the genre, because it's not something that translated into Canada, outside of Montreal, for the most part. I like it because, again, it's cheesy. Cheese is often regarded as kind of a negative quality, but in my case I think it is light-hearted and fun, and I like to bring something that is not overly serious when I'm playing. I love 80s pop music. My dad used to play it for me when I was very small. I think Italo disco was a natural progression from there, but, again, no one here likes it and that's fine. If I go to Europe, everyone loves it, so I can play it in other parts of the world, but here locally it's never going to fly with everybody, and I know that.
Is it catching on though? From some of the DJs that I've spoken to, it's often mentioned in passing as something they're interested in. Do you feel like it's getting more of a foothold in people's musical repertoire?
⎯⎯⎯ It's always kind of a background to alot of folks who may be interested in 80s music in particular, and also how electronic music has been influenced through the late 80s into the 90s and beyond. So, Italo disco did have a major influence on things like Chicago house for example, and Detroit techno, as much as aurally speaking there is quite a bit of difference within those types of music. I think one thing that's very interesting about Italo disco is that there is no particular sound. Everyone has in their own head that it sounds like a particular thing, but it's also just this catch-all for any kind of electronic music that was created in Italy, and furthermore in Germany, the Netherlands, and beyond, that isn't any specific style. It runs the gamut from the cheesiest pop you've ever heard to some kind of interestingly housey pieces, almost acid in some cases, and very post-punk influenced in others. So, I don't really think of it as a genre as opposed to music produced in a particular time and place. Maybe that is also why you're seeing other DJs mention it, because it can be almost anything and you can pick and choose the kind of sound that you like within that genre.
How did your love for Italo disco start? You mentioned that your dad was playing it when you were younger, so was it an early sound that you gravitated towards?
⎯⎯⎯ I wouldn't have known any actual Italo at the time, but my dad really liked Madonna, but also Danzig, and also a bunch of other things. He would play records for me in the basement in classic dad fashion and I was very obsessed with Madonna, so it makes sense that I would have this affinity for Italo disco based on that alone, but I really didn't encounter it until I was much older. Jamie Sin, who's a local DJ, and the late Will Munroe, who she used to DJ with early on, had a party that was kind of Italo and Italo adjacent, and that's when I first heard it and became very obsessed with this bizarre kind of cosmic, robot laden, absolutely cheesy sound. I'm someone who likes very nerdy things, a lot of horror movies and sci-fi movies, so it's in many ways the musical equivalent to that.
Right, it fits into that Giallo genre of films. Maybe that’s the cinematic equivalent of Italo disco.
⎯⎯⎯ Oh very much, very much. If you think about Suspiria and the soundtrack by Goblin, it’s a bit more prog adjacent than it is say pop, but at the same time you can see that kind of influence in terms of music into sort of later Italo throughout the 1980s. Yeah, totally, there's a Giallo vibe to it, and I love that shit so it makes sense that both visually and in terms of what I like to listen to that I gravitate toward this stuff.
It sounds like this is very rooted in a historical context for you, so do you feel that being a DJ is about being an educator of some kind?
I like doing that as a DJ. I'm mostly interested in the music and so DJing wasn't something that I gravitated toward when I started collecting. I was more interested in the music itself. Records are artifacts and are rarefied at this point, sometimes to their detriment, because we have this speculation capitalism that really guides record collecting. It’s extremely unfortunate because something that is intended to be shared and played publicly has now become this very limited arena of just being in the collector's own collection at home. I really disagree with that, so I do have this kind of obsession with digging into the history through music and through these artifacts and really wanting to share that, which is why I tend to play vinyl. I never really play digital files at all, it's almost exclusively records regardless of the shape that they're in. Not that I'm trying to be condescending and give people this history lesson, but I think connection is really interesting to me and really important, and so DJing is not a means to an end. The idea is to be able to share these kinds of rarefied artifacts with the public so that everyone can enjoy it – or hate it! That's a reaction too, and that's perfectly valid.
I'm wondering, because you were mentioning the sort of commodity aspect of record collecting, and the commodity aspect of a lot of forms of collecting and music in general, if there is a political element to DJing as an action? However you may interpret that.
⎯⎯⎯ Absolutely, and some people might be aware that in my day life I do a lot of political activism, so I do actively work with people who are homeless, but also spend much of my time, unpaid, advocating for better policies and for a better world essentially for everybody, but especially people who are extremely vulnerable. A lot of people find it incommensurable that I have this political identity that's very public facing, that I'm on the news and always deputing to government, but on the other hand I have this DJ life, and in many ways, it might not make sense on the surface, because, you know, the serious political work doesn't necessarily translate into this kind of more fun atmosphere of partying at night. But I think they make sense, and I think I do it in a way that does elucidate my own politics, which is to say, again, I'm an anti-capitalist. I don't like capitalism. I hate capitalism. It is the bane of my existence and of all of our existences. And yet, at the same time, I have this rarefied, expensive commodity that at this point, it's very hard for me to purchase with a public sector paycheck. It's even a little high barrier for me at this point. That is to say, you can subvert capitalism by sharing these things publicly. So I have these mixes that I put out, the YouTube channel, and I rip things and share them with people. I often get people asking me for rips. Sure. No problem. I think, again, music is not something to be coveted. It's something to be shared, and I truly dislike when DJs will not give song IDs or not share their files more generally, because who are you to take ownership of this thing? It's not our material to begin with. So yeah, I think I do that through the YouTube channel, sharing files, and again, just having this commodity, which some collectors go absolutely bonkers that I am playing these things out in a club and actively destroying them, but these things are meant to be played. That is their life. I don't want to have them rot, essentially, in my own home. I want them to live their life until they're absolutely degraded, and have people listen to them. So I think that is anti-capitalist in itself. But I think it's maybe not the most obvious position to everybody. I think with record collecting as well, it's gotten to a point where it's become inextricably linked to high capitalism and speculation capitalism, where the rarefied aspect of it, the price of it, is almost like the way people consume natural wine and champagne. It's a luxury, and that's how they want to consume it, and so I really want to subvert that as much as possible and make things as accessible as I can.
What you're talking about is a kind of deeper political interweaving within art in general. One of the things that you mentioned about keeping records on the shelf and not playing them, or that some collectors are upset that you play them, is essentially keeping the voice of the record, the voices of the past, silent. That's what capitalism would prefer.
⎯⎯⎯ I mean, I have a deeper ethos of believing that no artwork should be owned in a private collection. That extends absolutely to music. Everything should be made public and be able to be appreciated by the public at large. I have a background in museum studies, weirdly.
That’s really cool.
⎯⎯⎯ It makes sense, actually! I don't work in a museum and I certainly would not because I actually do believe that, although culture is worth preserving, to take artifacts out of their natural life and preserve them in perpetuity; who does that benefit, and why? Who does that harm and why? And so I don't like to be overly precious with artifacts. Again, I think it's important that they live their lives, even though things often take on new lives. But in the case of this music, much of it is not available digitally. So this is the only way that it can be actively shared, and why would I hoard that? I don't believe in private collections. I believe in public access.
That leads me to another thought about public access, and specifically about Napster when file sharing became part of our lexicon and part of our day to day existence; how disruptive that was to the music industry; how it had to be shut down; and how it transformed from being an anti-capitalist action to turning programmers into technological startup billionaires. I just wonder what your thoughts are on that kind of transformation and how something quotidian, like DJing at a club, is potentially honoring that anti-capitalist stance?
⎯⎯⎯ It’s really interesting because it's such a unique time in the history of the internet, when there was this kind of egalitarian push that we disrupt these systems and the gatekeepers therein, but we've also co-opted that to the extent that we now have something like Spotify which has taken that basic tenet of having these digital files and then recreated it as a means for only a very few people to profit to the high detriment of the artists who may actually have their music on the platform. So digital technologies were kind of renegade, I think, if we're talking about the early 2000s and the late 90s, and that has long dissipated. One thing that capitalism is very good at is every time that we push back and create these new routes to be anti-capitalist, it will co-opt what we're doing and find a way to turn that into something that they can monetize. It's hard to do that when you're still doing things in person though, and with artifacts that, again, don't have much of a digital life. There is this kind of push and pull with records because, as I said, they are this luxury commodity and are venerated because of a luxury status, but at the same time if you don't treat them with that kind of special reverence and treat them instead as this object to be shared I think you can circumvent that and do something that is a little bit disruptive. I probably think about DJing a little too much in these kind of more theoretical ways than probably most people do, for better or for worse. [laughs] I'm sure some people would find it funny that I even have this kind of ethos about something that can be as silly as Italo disco, but here we are!
When I was listening to your Work Redux mix I had the distinct feeling that you were making music at the same time as you were sharing it and DJing. Do you feel that way about it when you're putting together a mix? Are you participating in the actual creation of the music?
⎯⎯⎯ Yeah, I spend a lot of time considering what makes sense and what kind of themes I want to express in a mix. With this particular one there isn't actually any beat matching. I have a tendency to just beat match, because in dance music you do that, but I wanted to abandon that entirely and instead create these more sonic threads that aren't related necessarily to the bpm but rather to a kind of mood or thematic. So, in this case, I wanted to feel a bit more introspective, and have more of that cosmic kind of feeling to things, because that's kind of where I started, listening to a lot of what at the time would have been called cosmic disco or space disco. That's not even a genre, it's just a label that people were applying in the 2000s or whatever, but that's kind of my ground and my base when it comes to this music overall and my collection. I always gravitate toward that kind of cosmic sound, and also I wanted to really reflect an introspective mood. You're supposed to be working to it, so I'm also just trying to be practical and put together something that's not going to be too obtuse or too obvious, that kind of floats in the background and maybe even enhances what it is that you're doing or thinking about.
When it comes to putting together the music that you're going to draw from, do you assemble it by feeling, or by instrument, or maybe genre? What's your methodology when it comes to laying out the building blocks of the mix?
⎯⎯⎯ I think it really depends on what the overarching theme is. I did a mix for Sound Metaphors because I love Halloween, and I wanted everything to have a bit of a creepy vibe to it, so sonically there is more of an obvious linkage, but in another case I made a mix just on my own for my former radio show which was showcasing “Italo disco” sounds from everywhere except Italy, and I wanted to hit every single continent and put together something where you could find some semblance of that Italo disco sound in South America, in Australia, or in Africa. I was very intentional in creating this geography or map of a sound. So it really depends. When I'm thinking about music or creating a mix I often think a lot about what the theme I'd like to express is and oftentimes that also follows the weather and the seasons. I can tend more toward kind of a harder new beat sound when the weather is cooler and then in the summertime it's a bit more balearic or tropical in nature.
How much new music do you listen to, for discovery or research, and how much are you retreading old favourites, or stuff that you’re just comforted by?
⎯⎯⎯ I don't know anything about new music. I really don't.
[Laughs] Well, at least new to you.
⎯⎯⎯ Right, right, okay. Contemporary music, I know nothing about, but the 80s is such a massive decade when so much music was being produced because people had within their ability the means to actually produce and press their own records in limited quantities. That was the first time that kind of technology came into the hands of everyday people and not necessarily technicians and people more involved in the music industry. So there's this massive catalog that I'm nowhere close to going through, not just of Italo but of all kinds of electronic music forms during the 1980s throughout the world, and particularly in Europe. It's been over a decade of doing this digging and there's always new things to discover. Even locally in terms of Canadian music, so much of it is undocumented, especially from the 1980s and 1970s. I'm often pulling through our own catalog of what's been produced and it’s strange to me how little information there is about this because there's actually a lot of spectacular stuff. So, if it's contemporary, no idea. Anything older, still digging.
That's an interesting point you make about the local Toronto history of recording and studios. Were you aware of this history as you were growing up?
⎯⎯⎯ Not at all. I think, like a lot of people, our knowledge is guided by the CRTC and whatever CanCon happened to be on popular music. So do I know Kim Mitchell “Patio Lanterns”? Absolutely. But in terms of that more underground music, whatever the genre and whatever the community? No, not at all. I think a little known history about Toronto is that we have quite a few hi-NRG acts from the 1980s that made it quite big in other parts of the world. Tapps for example are still huge in South America, one of the biggest hi-NRG acts that ever was, and yet people will be like “who's Tapps?” They're from Little Portugal, but you don't know about it. It's a very Toronto trait to not even know our own history until maybe it makes it somewhere else.
Do you think that that is a symptom of it having to be exported to be validated?
⎯⎯⎯ It's a Toronto quality overall. We have this kind of self-loathing chip on our shoulder where we don't respect our local talent, that can be literary, it can be musical, until someone else recognizes us internationally or beyond our own borders. In my case, you know, when I started playing in Europe suddenly the locals became interested in me. Nothing changed in terms of what I was doing, the music I was playing, but I just became another victim, I suppose, of this very Toronto mentality: that we're not good enough on our own, that we have to be recognized elsewhere for us to have any kind of status.
It's not good enough if it's just something that moves us, or is a part of our history, or our present.
⎯⎯⎯ I feel like some of this is changing. I'm seeing a lot more local bookings and emphasis on booking people who are locals, but for a long time no one tried to build a DJ scene locally. There's always been this emphasis on making it abroad, but the truth is we're in Canada. We're isolated. Agents are not going to be putting you on their roster because it's simply too much of a loss financially to take on Canadian talent outside of maybe someone who has dual citizenship in the U.S., or someone who lives in Vancouver. So, speaking about Toronto specifically, I'm just not financially viable to become international DJ talent for the most part, and that's totally okay. I think that’s totally okay. So why are we not emphasizing building local scenes and promoting our local talent? Again, that is starting to happen and I love it, but I would love to see more investment and more accolades given to people who are doing this in the city.
–Work Redux is a collection of mixes made to be listened to while working. We work closely with local and international DJs to assemble thoughtful music that will carry members throughout their day and introduce them to new sounds. East Room is a shared workspace company providing design-forward office solutions, authentic programming and a diverse community to established companies and enterprising freelancers. We explore art, design, music, and entrepreneurship. Visit our News & Stories page to read more.
