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The collective Others To The Front stands unprecedentedly in the queer House music scene in Madrid. It is a collective from which a constant political review of the dance music scene is carried out, from the core. Now they are releasing their compilation number 1, which is also a testimony to a career in which they have not stopped creating, desiring and feeling new imaginaries that challenge the imposed heterocapitalist imaginary.
We have had the pleasure of interviewing them and this has been the result.
Hello! How would you define Others to the Front briefly?
Others to the Front is a FLINTA-DIY collective that, through the politics of dance music, is in search of a dancefloor worth dancing to. Others began to be outlined in January 2021, since then it has been a multiform collective, mutant of members and projects. It has changed, evolved, reinvented itself but always with the intention of queerifying and politicizing dancefloors by putting otherness at the forefront. Currently it translates into parties, a podcast, a label and a blog. The door is open for anyone who wants to get into the politics of dance from a dissident perspective, if you want to join just contact us.
https://otherstothefront.noblogs.org/
What can you tell us about your podcast House of Others, how did it come about and how much has it changed since you started?
House Of Others is the name we give to the purpose of bringing back House music to its rightful audience. It was born in May 2021 with the idea of being a monthly podcast, eventually it was bi-monthly and after completing its first year it has been weekly.
A weekly podcast that portrays the different tones and varieties of House, be it Vocal House, Deep House, Acid House, Hip House, Garage, UK Garage, Speed Garage, always invoking Jack’s Groove.
We have thought about lowering the periodicity due to the time invested, but there is a need for the House music that we can’t avoid. Right now we have everything scheduled until the end of the year.
House culture is reborn not only because we want it, but also because we need it.
What makes House of Others special?
Being a House podcast understanding House as a feeling and a way of DJing more than a genre. It’s not so much about looking for “authenticity” or a purist sound, but about bringing to everyone a culture that has been neglected and mistreated, a culture that belongs to the queer & POC communities, who wanted to take it away from us and we want it back. (Few subgenres of electronic music have been more neglected, despised, commodified and distorted, as has been the case with House).
Having the tracklist as a backbone due to its horizontality, its collaborative function, its alliance, its autonomy, which are a fundamental part of the DIY underground culture. Along with a unique and colorful aesthetic.
Publishing 2-hour mixes giving voice to DJs, from different scenes of the underground world, belonging to the queer and/or POC community, making us transit through their vision of House, in dialogue with their other lives, resistant and rebellious lives, never banal and always disobedient.
How does House of Others define the tracklist?
Before the advent of the Internet, the main source of information to find a Tracklist was through magazines and fanzines, which focused on dance music, becoming a central element of the rave scene and subway club culture. It is a script, not just a tracklist, to tell the stories that convey the feeling of House: Love, Peace and Unity. The underground cannot exist without archaeology: didigging in search of history and new sounds is an obsession of music and dance lovers that has no end. DJ Stingray related the Tracklist as a way to explore new sounds, push the boundaries and break the barriers between genres.
The Tracklist is a chorus with its own voice, where nobody wins or everybody wins, it is our way to create alliances and feel the union, to survive in a world that has wanted us, and still wants us, dead. To survive in a system that wants us full of fear, while our rage is empowered by those who preceded us, because we will not allow their stories to be silenced. We have no time to settle, they want us apart and they will find us together, dancing to the story of the always dispossessed and the never again oppressed, the story of the infinite losers and the never again silenced.
With each anniversary we publish the Tracklist of Tracklists as a return to our community for joining us and walking together, a useful tool for newcomers, a guide for those who are about to come to find a way into the overflowing world of underground House culture.
House of Others TRACKLIST
What does the release of the first compilation mean, what has been the criteria for this compilation?
We are very excited to release this compilation, which coincides with the celebration of the second anniversary of House of Others, bringing together DJs who have previously collaborated on the podcast. An empowering choreography between the groove of the producers, the mastering of Lana Saints, the graphics of Myrto O’Sullivan and the production of Materia Hache, with the joint desire to further strengthen the ever-building HoO community and its radical love for underground House culture.
HoO vol.1 is the shared experience of 14 stories of 16 producers who travel together transatlanticaly, during 1 hour 18 minutes 41 seconds, in the format of House electronic music. A journey to dive into the overflowing world of the most underground House culture. Formed by 14 tracks that in alliance reclaim House music as the music of the otherness, as a safe place to let ourselves be, to question and seduce ourselves to the rhythm of melodies loaded with for-coming. Suggestive and dissident soundscapes, experiences of otherness that connect us and remind us that we are not alone.
https://otherstothefront.bandcamp.com/album/hoo-compilation-vol-1
What projects are you currently working on, and where would you like to focus your next projects?
Others is currently in the process of recomposition, with one and a half feet in Berlin. The idea is to continue doing what has been done so far. To continue doing politics from music, from the dancefloor, from our dissident bodies, in short, from otherness. We will not stop dancing, going through the comings and goings of the dancefloor because we do not understand any other way of existing.
LINKS: Bandcamp
