Finnish DJ Yotto talks about his musical influences and why he thinks going mainstream is okay
On his return to India, underground house producer Yotto is more than happy to be back in the country. Wrapping up a four-city tour on Sunday that went through Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, Otto Yliperttula’s (his real name) mellow yet danceable tunes were a hit everywhere he went. “The people here party very well, and they really get into the music. It’s probably just growing all the time, and it looks kind of promising,” the Finnish DJ says of the Indian EDM scene.
After being picked up by deep house label Anjunadeep late last year, Yotto’s been busy touring the world alongside fellow label mates. “It’s great working with (Anjunadeep) and it’s changed a lot since before, because even my management changed. It switched everything into a whole other gear and it just made everything so much more professional,” says Yotto.
The touring, he says, is also something that inspires him when he’s working on new material — “I always try to work on a lot of music when I’m touring and get drafts out when I’m flying. And then, when I get back home I turn them into actual tracks. It’s inspiring to be in different locations and it’s good to have those energy levels around you.”
His interest in music began with him playing the piano as a kid, which led to him fooling around with a synthesiser and computer software at home to create “some horrible music” at first. “We have a great public library system in Finland that let me scroll through all these great records and borrow them for free for a couple of weeks. I once accidentally picked up music by the Chemical Brothers and Moby. They were probably the first proper influences I had,” Yotto says, adding that he also used to listen to rock and hip hop thanks to his family — including his brother, who goes by the moniker CAPS, and who is “way more skilled” at music than he is.
Also known for his remixes of tracks by mainstream artistes like Coldplay, Yotto believes that remixes take up just as much of his creative process as original material does. “I always try to remix tracks I really like, if they’re challenging. So I can turn the original into something that’s different but playable in a whole new environment, and that fit in my sets too,” he says, explaining that his music “works in a club environment, but is what you’d also like to listen to at home as well”.
Transitioning into the mainstream has its pitfalls with producers labelled as sell-outs for doing so, but Yotto says that this is just not true. “I don’t really see them as selling out, they’re just making music that most people become in to. Especially some of the older guys like David Guetta — they get a lot of bad press, but I just think their music has always been that like that — catchy. And it’s just a lot more people are enjoying it now.”
