The HDYBYS are heading back to Australia.

We caught up with Josh Young (J2K) and Curt Cameruci (Autobot) from Flosstradamus ahead of their return to our shores, to speak about their growing and super loyal fan base, collaborations and their love for performing in Australia

JA: Your upcoming tour starts on the 27th of Jan in Auckland – excited?

Josh: Always excited to get back down to Australia, its like our home away from home.

JA- For sure, I definitely feel as if you guys have an underlying love for Australia, what keeps bringing you back?

Josh – The fans man, the fans keep bringing us back. The shows are always amazing and the kids down there have really taken to our sound and our movement, and its really awesome. In addition to that my wife is Australian, she’s a Blacktown girl so thats definitely another underlying part for me.

JA – .. but can we start a good moshpit?

Josh – (laughs) You guys are definitely up there, you’re top 3 for sure. Any American artist and this is no bullshit, they all when they say they go to Australia, they all say the crowds go the hardest and its true, you guys go fucking crazy.

JA – I remember witnessing pretty wild shit actually, it was at the end of your second show in Sydney and you guys asked everyone to separate to two sides to which you then dropped moshpit. Everyone lost their shit, it was intense. 

Josh – (laughs) Those Sydney shows were fucking crazy, they were definitely highlights of that whole tour and even highlights of the year truthfully. We’ll have to see what we can do at the Enmore Theatre.

JA – No doubt, very excited for that show. How do you think you guys have managed to organically create and maintain such a furiously loyal group of fans considering your huge success?

Josh – I think its come from a lot of interaction with the fanbase, but also trap as a genre didn’t really have anyone to sort of hold the flag or hold the torch – a lot of the producers who were doing it a higher level were almost ashamed to call it trap or to be apart of it you know because I think a lot of people are cautious about putting titles on things now. We were never the type of guys to shy away from it or to say its not ours and its not our movement, so we sort of stepped up when there needed to be a person to be like hey these are the guys running that sound and we’ve really included the fans and they’ve been as much apart of making it what its become as we have.

JA – For sure, you definitely have a cult following under the whole HDYBY / HDYGRL movement, is there a meaning behind the whole HDYBY / HDYGRL title, or was it literally because you guys wore hoodies on stage?

Curt – (laughs) We just use to wear hoodies on stage, and then we started calling ourselves HDYBYs and then the girls wanted to be called HDYGRLs so then they started calling themselves that and i mean everyone started titling themselves what they were which planted the seed for HDYNATION and yeah from there it kept growing and growing. Now theres HDYBBYZ.

JA – (laughs) Thats new. So speaking of your upcoming tour, its great to see you’ve got two rising trap acts in the form of Troyboi and NGHTMRE on support, did you guys want to bring them on tour?

Josh – Yeah, definitely. Troyboi is someone who we worked with on Soundclash and hung out with, we’ve sort of kept crossing paths throughout the year and he’s had an insane year so he was someone we were planning on touring with, and NGHTMRE came up last minute, they asked us if we were interested and of course we said yes, and that worked out perfect because we just released our latest single Lighters Up with him so its great to have him on the tour and yeah its going be a fucking rowdy bunch man.

JA – Fuck yeah, and i mean with kids like NGHTMRE, Sam Gellaitry and Mura Masa constantly evolving and pushing the boundaries of trap music, what do you think the future holds for i guess trap music as a genre?

Josh – The evolution of electronic music is all the same right now, its all so mixed and its all so influenced by each other that the title trap is almost becoming useless because everything is evolving so quickly and morphing, so you know if you listen to some of the stuff that those guys are making now, it almost doesn’t even sound like the original trap shit that was coming out that defined the genre. You gotta keep it moving.

JA – Are there any projects in the works in terms or upcoming music and or collaborations that fans might be able to see in the near future?

Curt – Yeah we just released the song Lighters Up with NGHTMRE and thats out right now. We have some other collaborations that we’ve been doing with new up and coming artists like Party Thieves, and we did a song with this girl on our last EP, her name is Sizzy Rocket, and we have a song coming out called Those Nights with her.

JA – It’s quite evident that you guys are immersed in fashion just as much are you music, how was it working with Kanye associate Virgil Abloh from Off White when developing your live show?

Curt – It was cool man, we toured with him, he use to be in this DJ group called Been Trill, we toured with him for a few months and we were just riffing about stuff because I mean he helps develops a lot of shows, like Kanye shows, and we were just riffing on things and he gave us an input and helped us narrow our vision down to kind of what we wanted to do for the HYDNATION tour, it was cool.

JA- Thats cool, it sounds like it the whole process occurred really naturally.

Curt – For sure, he’s also a Chicago boy and we’re all just friends, it was natural.

JA – So before you guys started doing music, and when you were growing up, did you have any other aspirations?

Curt – I mean I’ve always just liked to create anything, like design, audio stuff or even just hacking things, no matter what I’d be doing as a career, it would definitely be something creative. Music was the thing that was able to get me away from Chicago, thats why music was the main choice. It could’ve been any other route.

Josh – Same thing here, I’ve always been creative, I’ve always done thing in creative fields but as far as jobs go I just didn’t want a day job, that was kind of my main goal, i didn’t want a 9-5 so whatever I was doing I was sort of staying away from that, I thought I was going to be a pro baseball player for a bit.

JA – (laughs) Yeah I think every kid has that sports star sort of dream

Josh – (laughs) Yeah yeah, you’re right to have that for sure.

JA – Definitely. Growing up and at the start of your career, you were on turntables and a lot of older gear, how have you guys found adapting to the constant evolution of software and technology?

Curt – Technology for us has just made things a lot easier, and you can get more creative, for example, now we play through Ableton, and sometimes were playing 3 tracks at a time – to be able to do that on turntables was a little taxing, it took time. Now we can layer things a lot easier and hence make the show more flawless.

Josh – We switched up to Ableton 4 years ago and we haven’t looked back – its been game changing for our show.

JA – Have you guys always been on Ableton or were there other programs in the early days?

Curt – We made our first mixtape in Acid music a long time ago and then we ended up using logic for a few years before moving to Ableton and I think thats pretty much our platform of choice.

JA – Fair enough. So seeing as your wife was born in Australia josh, are there any spots around Sydney that you tend to visit when you’re down?

Josh – I like fine dining so on that level i’m always hitting up Ms. G’s, but also like going to the corner store and hitting up the schnitty shops – thats just untouchable. Its good for after the shows.

JA – You cant go wrong with a sweaty 3am feed.

Josh – (laughs) Exactly, thats a very Chicago kinda vibe, we have a lot of that kind of street food so it makes me feel even more at home.

Click here for more info on their tour. Big up’s the team at BBE for making this possible once again.