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Simon Doty's origins from the depths of Canada's western desert to a college basketball shooting guard are unlikely beginnings for the development of a finely tuned electronic artist. This creator and sound selector is a self-taught "wunderkind" with a deep understanding of composition and musical engineering that has won the ears of his peers and heroes alike. Featuring a consistent yet dynamic signature sound defined by energetic analog synthesis, soulful melodies, and strong, powerful rhythms; after years of mastering his sound and rising through the ranks of the underground circuit, this year Doty has been sporting a hot hand with an arsenal of hardcore original production and some heavy hitting remixes, on labels including Anjunadeep, Knee Deep In Sound and now his latest cut on Gorgon City’s Realm imprint ‘Party with a Purpose’.
Simon’s currently in the middle of a North American tour, hitting San Francisco, LA, NYC, Chicago and Toronto.
We had the pleasure of speaking with him around this new release... Enjoy it!
Hey Simon, thanks for speaking with us! For those who may not be familiar yet, when did you start falling in love with electronic music? And what was the turning point from a hobby into a career?
Well I’ve actually been listening to electronic musc for a really long time. When I was five years old my parents bought us the Black Box tape (they had some famous early 90’s hits) and from then on I was always listening to it. As soon as I graduated from University, I decided to start DJing. Initially I had to play everything from hip hop to top 40 because there weren’t a lot of clubs doing electronic music where I was from.
You were brought up in the mountains in West Canada right? What was it like growing up there?
Yeah I grew up in Calgary, very close to the mountains. It is a very nice place to live. It’s very peaceful and calm and there is tons of amazing scenery close by for hiking and outdoor sports.
You’ve had some epic releases this year on Knee Deep, Anjunadeep, Stress Records.. the latest being your single ‘Party with a Purpose’ on Gorgon City’s Realm Records.
How would you say your sound is evolving?
I’ve been slowly getting housier over the last couple of years it seems, while still staying pretty melodic. I love a huge range of music and styles so it’s hard for me to stick to one sound. I’m always trying new things out.
When you’re playing a set or creating a mix, what artists and tracks are you really enjoying at the moment?
I always play a lot of Dosem tracks and have been a big fan of his for a while. There’s some great up-and-coming artists from the UK too like Because of Art and My Friend. I’m always playing their tracks as well.
What projects are you working on right now? You launched your RECESS events series this year too didn’t you, how did the launch go? What can we expect from the events in the coming months?
I have a lot of new music coming out this fall and some releases already set for 2022. Now just working on filling out the calendar of releases for next year as well as some other remixes and collabs. We did our first Recess event with Dosem in Miami on the 4th of July yeah, it was a great success! We have some more events coming this year and into 2022. The events are based around me bringing a guest artist or artists that fit with a similar vibe and style.
We all know that the digital revolution has affected sales, but has it affected creativity do you think?
That’s an interesting question. It’s nice in a sense that it’s so easy to make music now but I definitely think that music has started becoming ‘content’ for artists more than anything else. They just want to constantly have music being released regardless of the quality and I think this has affected creativity a bit. It used to be a much harder and much more expensive process to make and release music, so you had to really believe in what you were releasing. Now I don’t think this is the case.
Once we’re out of lockdown fully and there is freedom to travel the world, where is the first place you’d love to travel to overseas for a gig (a specific country or club)?
I’ve always wanted to travel to and play in Australia and it looks like I’ll be heading there in 2022, so long as we aren’t still locked down! :)
Catch Simon at:
10.08 Sound, LA 10.09 Coda, Toronto 10.23 Bogart House, Brooklyn 11.12 Sound Bar, Chicago
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