From humble beginnings as residents at Ballarat’s Karova Lounge, the Yacht Club DJs have quickly become the go-to guys of the festival circuit. Armed with an arsenal of party-ready mash-ups, the duo has conquered Parklife, Meredith Music Festival, Field Day, Splendour In The Grass and several more.

Last week, Guy and Gaz kicked off their ‘Batten Down The Hatches’ tour, taking the Yacht Club brand of mayhem (think nakedness, stage invasions, riding the crowd in an inflatable dinghy and the occasional broken leg) to clubs around the country. ITM tracked down Gaz to get a feel for what we’re in for.

All this madness began when you were resident DJs at Karova Lounge in Ballarat. What did a residency at a primarily live music venue teach you?
No one parties quite like the Karova Lounge on a wild night. At its best, Karova Lounge is like the rowdiest, no-rule punk rock throwdown you’ve ever seen. We’ve seen nights where everyone ends up naked and literally hanging from the roof. You name a crazy situation from any number of ‘80s party movies and we can almost guarantee we’ve seen it there, or caused it! What that taught us essentially was our energy and stage show. We want everyone in Australia to throw down and party like your Iggy Pop on a bender in 1975. It’s party like death all the way with Karova and us when we’re together.

You guys are confessed mash-up tragics; when you started making them yourselves, did you want to take a different approach from others out there?
It comes from a lot of places. I think we’d be hypocrites if we said we had a set of rules that we stuck to every time we sat down at a computer or stood in front of a set of decks. Back when I was doing turntablism, I got right into the way Dexter from the Avalanches did his mash-ups and then later 2mandjs and Z-Trip. So like most young DJs I was out at op shops, dance record stores, rock record stores. You name it; I was buying everything and spinning it in my sets.

Then the internet and computers took over and I met Guy and I wasn’t alone anymore. We literally just sat around making each other laugh. No stone was too ridiculous to turn, in a manner of speaking. If you talked to anyone who saw our early shows they would tell you we did some ridiculous mixes and played some horrible shit. These days we don’t play other peoples mash-ups at all and try not to let tempo or traditional music theory get in the way of what we want the music to do, but at the same time try and get it to sound polished and listenable. Though our live mash-ups tend to have a mind of their own from sound system to sound system. But that’s the fun of mash-up.

Your sets at Parklife last year took you to a wider audience. Do you have to approach those mega-gigs quite differently from how you would play in a small, sweaty club?
Not really. I guess the travelling aspect means more shows with less sleep, but we always try to approach every show with the same amounts of energy. Parklife was a massive blast for us both, but we had Metric’s sound guys crawling all over the stage setting up their gear and a shorter set, so we really had to lift our game personally.

Normally the crowd has just us to look at, so we can just go crazy on stage. When there was a pile of guitar pedals and synths in front of us and sound guys checking drums we found ourselves getting in and on the crowd and going way more nuts just to take the crowd’s mind off everything else that was happening around us. It was quite unnerving having angry Metric roadies messing with your show too. In reality though, we try to bring the same crazy antics and musical choice to every performance. Be it a club, music venue or festival. It’s way more fun that way anyway.

What inspired the inflatable boat across the crowd? Just something you always wanted to try?
The original idea was for the intro to our Meredith set the second time around. We wanted to be on top of the sound shed in an enormous inflatable boat and get our intro triggered and ride down the crowd to the stage with radio mics hyping everyone up. That was hit on the head pretty fast and we probably would’ve got killed or lost the mics. Fair enough really.

So from there, our manager suggested a smaller boat and just doing it without asking at the end of the show. So we were like, hell, Melbourne Parklife is this weekend – let’s do it there. The rest is history and the stage guys on the Fire Stage loved it. They thought we were crazy, but they loved it. I remember them all coming up with crazier and crazier ideas after each time it happened. Now it’s a staple of our show. Even in clubs, believe it or not. I just never want to break my leg again like I did in Sydney, though I probably will!

You certainly played your share of festivals over summer. What were some of the standout memories?
Wow, so many! Chris, Alice and Ethan from Crystal Castles were the nicest people ever. We hung out with Bez from the Happy Mondays for a few days. That was great; he introduced me to Mick Jones from The Clash! Definite highlight. Shaun Ryder didn’t like me too much though. Lady Sovereign jumpin’ on Guy’s bed whilst he was trying to sleep at my request was a highlight. We got into some crazy drinking missions with her and the Art vs Science boys on the Parklife tour.

Breaking my leg in Sydney and continuing on to Adelaide without going to hospital and making it worse was a highlight and a lowlight. I could say a million more things both appropriate and inappropriate, but at the end of the day the crowds are always the highlight. Nothing will ever beat walking out and seeing smiling people who are just up for having a massive party with us.

So, aside from all the gigs, do you have anything cooking on the release front?
We really want to do an official mixtape release or even a series, but finding a record label who is dedicated enough to go through the hell of clearing 500-plus samples quickly enough to keep the mixes relevant is always going to be tricky. It’ll happen one day but until then everything happens virally over the Internet. We enjoy giving music back to the people. No matter whose it is.

You did the ‘Kleptomania’ tour in November last year. Is the plan to make the ‘Batten Down The Hatches’ gigs bigger and better?
There are more dates and we’re taking two awesome bands with us to give more bang for buck. We also have some surprises up our sleeve that you’ll have to come to the show to see. It’s going to be a no-holds-barred fight-for-your-right kind of affair, where everyone will go home a little bit different to when they came.

The ‘Batten Down The Hatches’ tour hits the following venues, proudly presented by inthemix.

Thurs 25 March – Transit Bar, Canberra
Fri 26 & Sat 27 March – Spectrum, Sydney
Thur 1 April – The National Hotel, Geelong
Fri 2 April – Prince Of Wales, St Kilda
Sat 3 April – Karova Lounge, Ballarat
Sun 4 April – Jive, Adelaide
Thur 8 April – Never Land Bar, Coolangatta
Fri 9 April – Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
Sat 10 April – The Zoo, Brisbane