CRATERY 82: Hotthobo

L.A. raised DJ and label owner Randy “Hotthobo” Ellis was in town guesting at Toronto’s Modern Funk Fest, and our hommie Famous Lee of Love Handle fame thought he’d be perfect for a Cratery episode. It’s always a pleasure to connect with real music lovers. And like many real music lovers, Hotthobo has dedicated his life to music. While his west coast roots have certainly informed his taste for funk, Hotthobo isn’t defined by a single genre. His first selection on this month’s episode, Las Grecas’ “Bella Kali” (used on Gonjasufi’s “Cowboys and Indians”), is a far cry from the lo-fi handclaps found on Adam Chini’s “Don’t tempt me”, released on his own Hobo Camp label earlier this year. But admittedly, like many of us, soul and funk music is his first love. And Randy’s got the goods to prove it. It certainly explains the inclusion of the Ted Coleman Band on this episode. As well as Zodiac’s “Miss you”, which I added to my Discogs wantlist without shame before he was even done playing it. Trust me – it’s always a good sign when that happens during an episode. Audio and tracklist below.

You grew up in LA? What got you hooked on music?

Yeah, specifically “the Valley” (aka the San Fernando Valley). My dad is a musician and composer, who has produced commercial and TV music throughout the years, among other varying and wildly random music projects. So it started with birth more or less, I can’t really remember a time not having music be pretty present.

How did your obsession with vinyl begin?

I was always into music, especially cassettes and CDs, and my dad and I would hit The Wherehouse and Tower Records in the Valley quite regularly…it was something I always looked forward to. So the obsession with albums/consumer music started pretty early on, but when I was around 15 years old, my parents let me raid their record collection, which was mainly a lot of classic rock, classical, fusion, and jazz. I found that Freddie Hubbard record “Red Clay” in my dad’s records which is still to this day one of my favorite LPs… it contained a Tribe Called Quest sample, who I was really into at the time, and I made that connection that hip hop producers sampled records to make beats. I didn’t really understand that up until that point, and so it opened up this world to find all the stuff that the hip-hop guys sampled, while I was also looking for current hip-hop and jungle records. Obviously I tried scratching for the first time on a single turntable, and that was just like this rad new way to interact with music, and I would try to play stuff over a portable tape deck and then scratch the record on my parent’s soundsystem. Moby Disk, a record store in Sherman Oaks was walking distance from this school I went to, and they had a very cheap used record and cd section and one of the clerks was pretty nice to me and would point out stuff to check out, so I started to slowly buy records.

Tell us a little bit about your labels: Hobo Camp and Voltaire Records. Most people would find running one independent label ambitious. Why two? And what’s the difference between them?

Well Voltaire was started in SF a little over 5 years ago with my buddies Dave and Matt. Dave was already producing stuff under the name “The DMV” before that, which then became “Loose Shus” and him and my other friend Amy started to teach me basic production techniques on Ableton. Generally we were just really into music, dj-ing, skateboarding, and partying, and we knew a few producers through MySpace or mutual friends who had great tunes and nothing physically out, so we set out to try to put out a compilation record which ended up being Affairs-Online. We actually didn’t finish that project until after our first release, as my buddy Nathan from the band Tussle heard I was trying to start a label and put me in touch with Publicist (aka Seb from Trans Am) who had an EP of tunes ready to go that we were immediately stoked on…that ended up being the 1st Voltaire release. Now we’re on ou