No one does quite bolshy like Hot City.

The loosely anonymous, garage-adoring team and former FACT mixers made a name for themselves with elasticated UK anthems like ‘Yeah!’, and ‘No More’, and recently announced news of a debut album for Moshi Moshi. Eager to find out how an indie-leaning  label would even start to cope with their music, we got in touch with Hot City for the first in a new series of five-minute long interviews on FACT.

While you read the piece, you can stream ‘Twist’, a track from the forthcoming album featuring MC DT, and plenty of references to ‘Do You Really Like It?’:

Hot City feat. MC DT – ‘Twist’

So, Hot City – what’s the official line-up now? Or are you staying shady about that sort of thing?

“Well, it’s DJ Haus & Benz, and when he’s about Markus Dee a.k.a MC Freeze.”

You seem to be fully signed up to Moshi Moshi now, you released your last single, ‘Another Girl’ with the label, and the album’s already been announced. How did that happen?

“They originally wanted to do a 12” after hearing ‘Yeah!’ on Highpoint Lowlife, and then heard more tracks which developed into a full album deal. It’s already opened a lot of doors as to who will play our records.”

How close is the album to completion? And how long have you been working on it? Will previously released tracks feature?

“Well ever since we signed the deal – ha! But at the moment we are just writing as much material as possible, doing an album for Moshi has opened up loads of collaborations… tracks will be some things we have been working on for years, we’re constantly playing out all our new stuff when we DJ and generally the stuff that gets the best reaction on the dancefloor is what we go with… There are a couple of older tracks that might feature but we don’t want to put stuff in there for the sake of it.”

Download: Robyn – Hang With Me (Hot City remix)
Download: DJ Haus & Benz – Freakin’ Hot

With Hot City’s music, or at least the stuff that’s been released so far, what defines it in many ways is its rave mentality, it doesn’t do things by halves. Big breakdowns, big basslines. How has making an album changed your approach to songs, if at all?

“Well from the beginning when we’ve been making tracks it’s all been about having as much fun with making music as we can, we’re not making an “album by numbers.” Albums are different things now than five years ago, so you could probably get away with doing a full album of bangers without having to do a downtempo track to split it up etc… But we’re all just playing around with as much music as we can, learning as we go.”

Any idea on the LP’s title?

“Not yet, but the ethos of Hot City is to Pump Things Up, so maybe something will come from that.”

Any guest appearances on it, bar MC DT on ‘Twist’?

“Yep, we’ve done a track with Rebecca from Slow Club and another with VV Brown! And a couple more people who I’m not sure if we should mention as we haven’t got their acapella back yet!

“We’re trying to get MC DT to take us to a wet T-shirt competition in Napa but we haven’t got our Live PA booked there yet – but it’s coming. We are doing a Live PA with him somewhere in the much less fun Shoreditch on the 6th November so watch out for that.”

What else is going on in the world of Hot City right now?

“We’re working with Native Instruments at the moment developing a live set using Machine which is really exciting. We’ve our first live show coming up for Annie Mac Presents in November… We’re working on a mix for DJ Mag at the moment which is quite different to what we’ve been doing before.. Playing in bigger clubs like Cream in Ibiza & Ministry of Sound been really fun for our DJing as we’re able to get away with playing some pretty mental stuff which is going down so well, so there’ll be more of that we hope!”