Coming in with Mantissa mix 189 is Berlin based, Bristol raised DJ and producer Amii Little. We had a catch up with her to chat about her move to Berlin, enjoyment of hard dance music and the state of the scene at the moment.
G: Hi Amii, do you want to quickly introduce yourself?
A: Hey, sure.. I’m Little, based in Berlin, originally from just outside London. I spent 7 years in Bristol where I first started mixing, playing out and learning to produce, originally through 6 week courses run by Bristol Women in Music and Saffron Records. I really have them to thank for offering the space and opportunity that helped me gain the confidence to give it a go after years of working more behind the scenes in music.
G: So you have just moved to Berlin, was the main reason behind that move for music?
A: It was always somewhere I wanted to move to in the future, music wise it makes sense to be here. I was happy in London, I just had to make a quick escape before Brexit made it more difficult, and so the move shifted forward. It was a shame because I only moved to London a couple of months before we went into lockdown. We had a few plans for some parties we were going to put on, one down at Rye Wax in March. That was going to be our first Boys Club party so pretty devastating that couldn’t go ahead. We then started planning a party at The Cause in November, but went back into lockdown again.
In the space of a week in November I just made the plans to move over here. It’s been great though, although nowhere is open I’ve been able to focus on production still, alone and with some people I’ve met.
G: I appreciate it must be a challenge to move somewhere completely new and not have the dynamic of going out to meet people.
A: The lockdown restrictions here seem to have more of an understanding for people’s social needs, you’re still allowed to visit other people even if it’s like one person, which I think is super important regardless of whether you’re new to a city. Denying any social interaction in Winter is so detrimental to people’s mental health which needs to be considered at the same time as covid risks, in my opinion.
G: Just going to ask about Boys Club, how did it start how, did you get involved, can you just explain the idea behind the collective?
A: I used to work with an events technology company that shared an office with Silver Hayes. We had a good relationship and they were talking about programming the Sunday night silent disco on the Wow stage. I just said to them I’ll do it, let’s do an all female programme. We invited Rhythm Sister and Bristol Women in Music and for the third channel I took it as a bit of a kick in the ass to actually do something myself. Boys Club’s name basically came off the back of my experience’s in the industry where I’d seen a huge imbalance between gender and job roles, we felt the industry as a whole was a bit of a boys club.
So we’re at Glastonbury playing the silent disco which we were booked to play for seven hours.. It was the Sunday night and it seemed most the crowd had been there every night and came expecting a different vibe. People were yelling ‘play Oasis, play Mr Brightside!!’ and booing at us, I’d had a few drinks by this point and got on the microphone and told people if you want to listen to Wonderwall you can fuck off…
G: What kind of stuff were you playing?
A: I told everyone to play what they would play normally. We chatted about whether we should play what everyone wanted but I said no lets keep playing what we want, towards the end we each found our own compromise. It was definitely an experience, not the best start. But we woke up in the morning to a couple of messages on the Boys Club fb from people who’d stuck with our channel until the end. A couple of months later we grabbed a monthly radio show on Noods, then Boys Club started to take shape of what we wanted it to be. A platform for female and female identifying artists who are new to playing or up and coming. That was three years ago, you could already see more women appearing on lineups and a great shift in programming, but there was still this huge disparity between headliners, mid-tier being booked, and then collectives and labels all being a bunch of blokes.
The Noods show has been running for just over three years and we have had some amazing guests on the show, something I’m really proud of.
G: Is the plan to still throw parties once this all fades away?
A: Yeah definitely, once this all goes away. As soon as we can.
G: Just want to ask you about the scene as a whole, how do you assess the music industry and its progression on diversity?
A: I definitely think there are pockets of progression and change cannot happen overnight. There are certain areas of the music industry which are further ahead than others. Something that has been frustrating me is there seems to be some kind of backlash to efforts in increasing diversity. You’re still hearing some men saying ‘If I was a woman I would be getting this or that”, like they’re afraid of losing their spot to a woman. They have to understand that when white men have been the status quo for so long things like sticking to 50/50 lineups are sometimes needed to push back on that.
G: Yeah I completely agree. Have found a lot of frustration with this entire topic over the last year or so having been exposed to a lot more artists, labels on a personal level. Do you have any ideas or thoughts on what can be done to further this change?
A: I think implementing diversity rules work if it isn’t coming naturally, but I don’t think it should be the go to plan. I had a call once from a programmer asking for help saying that they were being told they didn’t have enough women on their line up and I said well have you tried them them them them, listing of a number of acts which they hadn’t approached. If people don’t do their research how do they expect to book more diverse lineups. There are even places online where the work has already been done, Femalepressure.net has a huge database of artists if you’re lacking female representation, blackbandcamp.info if your billing is whitewashed. If people struggle even after doing research to make labels or parties diverse, try hiring someone from within those under-represented groups. I think people have to be prepared to have tricky conversations and not become defensive when having those conversations.
G: Let me just ask you about some of your productions and your DJIng. The mixes of yours I have listened to are pretty heavy! Do you think that is your main musical style?
A:I love hard music, I love fast music. I grew up listening to metal amongst other things, and the first clubs I went to were hard house nights in South London, then garish dubstep nights, Happy Hardcore, and have been going to Bangface for over a decade now. I’ve bounced around from all kinds of intrusive music, and always had an interest in fast and hard and loud music. When I first started playing out I was very stubborn, always wanting to play really hard music. It has taken me a few years to understand and appreciate that I don’t always have to push it to the extremities, I guess I don’t feel like I have a point to prove any more. I’ve been really into a lot of RnB edits recently, and exploring some more melodic and less industrial sounds.
G: Are there any DJ’s you really enjoy or up-comers you would like to highlight?
A:It’s obviously been so long since club’s have been open and I really can’t get into livestreams so most my focus has been on the artists we’ve been booking for the Boys Club Noods show, they’re all fucking amazing..
Golden is a definite highlight her mixing and productions are sick, and we have a really exciting artist booked on the show next month. Thinking back to pre covid, Karen Gwyer is such an inspiration, she’s incredible to watch live. And Loraine James, I saw a few months before lockdown, she was amazing.
G: You mentioned you have started producing? How is that going?
A: Yeah, I first started messing around three years ago and signed up to a six week Logic course through Saffron Records, I was tinkering about with tracks for a year but don’t think it was until I moved in with a couple of friends who were really into their electronic music, one of which is an incredible musician/producer. I became more comfortable playing them the stuff I was making so I could hear actual feedback rather than just over thinking it in my head. At Love International I met Kiwi who runs Cross Breed, he got me to send him my Soundcloud when we were chatting on the dancefloor, he messaged me once I was back in the UK saying he really liked one of my tracks and within a couple of weeks we were finishing it up in the studio and I was recording vocals over his track for the B side. That came out last April as my first vinyl release. I still can’t believe that happened.
A: In October I self-released a digital remix of WAP for Boys Club. I have a couple of ideas in my mind, one E.P I need to sit down and finish. A few others I need to really put my head into. I am at the stage where I am quite proud and excited about the music I am making.
G: Would you recommend those starting to try short form courses to learn the ropes? Do you mainly use Ableton or Logic?
A: I think it completely depends on what kind of person you are. I think for totally new people courses or even YouTube tutorials are helpful, I’d say some kind of introduction to a DAW before self teaching is useful but it really depends from person to person.
G: Anything exciting coming up or in the works?
A: Depends if I finish anything! I have a new track called grossboy on my Soundcloud. Definitely going to try and host a party here in Berlin, hopefully get Litney Spears over and restart the Now that’s what I call a Clubnight events.
G: How did you set about record this mix for us?
A: I am really excited about it, I have decided to kind of step in between different genres that have influenced me. Genres that have even inspired me or been really important at pivotal parts of my life.
G: Thanks for chatting to us Amii!
A: Thanks for having me!
Keep up to date with Amii and Boys Club by following their socials:
https://www.instagram.com/littlergram/
https://www.instagram.com/boysc1ub/
Interview by: Angus Whitfield