Max HeyraudHailing from Derry, HOTLINE are one of the most exciting duos to emerge from Ireland’s electronic underground in recent years.
Known for their high-energy sets and genre-blurring productions, the pair have built a reputation for injecting fun and freedom back into the dancefloor. From sweaty club rooms to festival stages like Emerge in Belfast, they bring the same infectious spirit and DIY drive that’s rooted in the North’s tight-knit rave scene.
Blending everything from house, techno, garage, and trance to cheeky pop edits, HOTLINE has become a refreshing force in a scene often obsessed with coolness. Whether behind the decks or in the studio, their mission is simple: make people dance, smile, and feel part of something bigger.
You’ve played plenty of clubs, but Emerge is Belfast’s biggest electronic festival. How different is your approach to building a set for a massive festival crowd compared to a sweaty club room?
In the beginning, due to the size of the stage and the crowd, we were actually quite nervous. It might be Ireland’s biggest pure electronic festival, let alone in Belfast. The first year, we played the set over and over in preparation, but as time has gone on, we’ve relaxed a bit. Now, we put together a playlist of around 50 tunes that we’d like to play, then pick and choose from them depending on how the set is going.
This year, we were by far the least nervous going into the festival; it was just pure excitement. So much so that, before we went on stage, we were eating hot dogs, and I’m pretty sure Ciaron was even doing star jumps at one point. We always use Emerge as an opportunity to play tracks we’ve loved throughout the year, tracks we don’t get to play in warm-ups, or tracks that we know will sound better in a massive tent than in a dark, sweaty room. Sometimes we’ll hear a tune and immediately know we’ll be playing it at Emerge.
What’s your take on the infrastructure for nightlife in the North of Ireland- venues, licensing laws, promoters? Has it helped or hindered your journey?
Club hours are a joke, and licenses are outdated. It’s great to see initiatives like Free The Night actually tackling this. We’d say the lack of venues is making things difficult for many promoters, but people always find a way to put on a rave. In fact, the shortage of venues is pushing people to be more creative, which is amazing to see.
We’ve been very fortunate to play incredible spaces like the Telegraph Building regularly, but venues in Belfast seem to constantly close, with no new alternatives to replace them. Ultimately, the government continuously blocks opportunities for dance music in the North, which is ironic considering the amount of money dance events bring into the economy.
The North of Ireland has built a reputation for tight-knit but passionate electronic communities. How has growing up and working there influenced the way you approach collaboration and performance?
I feel like the North has an incredible amount of talent. Every year, someone new pops up with amazing productions or sets, and it’s fantastic to watch. Because of the lack of venues and events, you often end up at a show where the crowd is packed with other DJs from the scene. Being able to play your friends’ tracks during a set is an incredible feeling, especially when they’re there to hear it.
Seeing the resurgence of events in Derry, along with artists like Lorcan Kelly getting recognition globally, means a lot to us. Playing in Derry will always be important to us, no matter the size of the venue or the crowd.
Firstly, how did ‘Hotline’ / ‘callcentre_0800’ begin as a project, who are the people behind it, and what was the spark that made you start producing and DJing together?
We met while wristbanding together at Shine. Both of us are from Derry, but we had never spoken or even known of each other until we started working there. We used to finish shifts at 1 a.m., so we’d always hang around afterward, catching the end of the night back in the Mandela Hall and Bunatee days. I think that’s really where we fell in love with dance music.
From there, we got a controller. Ciaron used to do a show on Queen’s Radio, and we just started playing at after-parties, pre-parties, or really anywhere we could. Our first proper set was at Belfast night OCD, before becoming residents there. After that, Shine gave us the chance to warm up for KETTAMA, and everything really kicked off from there.
Which artists, genres, or life experiences have most shaped your creative direction? Are there non-electronic influences you draw from?
I think Mall Grab was our first real influence; his sets and productions shaped a lot of our early material. When we started out, we played a lot of house, French house, disco house, that kind of stuff. Shout out to the crew at Doubleu for soundtracking our early sets, too. From there, I’d say artists like KETTAMA had a huge influence, and more recently, I’d have to highlight JamesJamesJames, genuinely one of my favourite producers ever.
We both listen to a lot of music outside of dance as well. Ciaron is really into hip hop, grime, and drill, while I tend to gravitate toward hyperpop, pop punk, and metal. So collectively, I think we cover all bases.
Tell us about your collaboration with JÄXM on Move to the Rhythm. How did that partnership come about, and what was the creative chemistry like between you two?
I think JÄXM actually messaged us on Instagram. We had both followed each other already and had downloaded a few of his songs, so we were game for a collab right away. We decided to just send the project file back and forth, adding bits and pieces each time and tweaking it until we were both happy. It worked out really smoothly, since we had the exact same sound and vision for the track from the start. The hardest part was probably dealing with the time difference between Ireland and Australia.
How does Move to the Rhythm relate to your earlier tracks (like Blurred, We Belong Together, Murder On The Dancefloor (Edit)) – is it a departure, a refinement, or a convergence of previous ideas?
I think we have a really open-ended sound. We’re constantly working across different genres at the same time. We could close a techno project and open a garage project, then finish that and start a piano house track. It keeps the productions fresh, but more importantly, it helps us stay creative. Although Move to the Rhythm is quite different from our previous tracks, there are tricks and sounds we learned from all our past work that carried over into our recent projects.
If you had to sum up Hotline0800’s mission in one sentence, what are you here to do for club culture?
I’d say our mission is simply to bring fun and energy back to dancefloors, to make people dance. We’ve never been the type to avoid playing a track just because it’s “not cool.” We want people to come to raves and genuinely enjoy themselves, and there’s nothing we feed off more than a crowd full of smiles, cheers, and hands in the air.
You’ve done edits/remixes of well-known tracks. How do you approach respecting the original while stamping it with Hotline’s signature? What are the risks?
We definitely understand that there’s always a risk of upsetting some people when we start a remix. There will always be someone saying, “You shouldn’t have touched the original.” And honestly, there are some songs we’d never remix ourselves, some tracks should just be left alone. But if you look back through our catalogue, it’s rarely dance tracks we’ve remixed. Most of the time, it’s a cheesy pop song where we hear the vocals and think, “Those would sound incredible over some trance chords.”
When we decided to remix Raw Cuts by KETTAMA, we did have that moment of doubt, should we really be doing this? But the only reason we went ahead was because we genuinely loved the track. It was a staple in our early sets, and since we’d been playing more techno recently, we wanted a version that fit better with our sound. Funny enough, just after we finished the remix, the original really started to blow up again, which actually helped us, a lot. Every time we played our remix, the crowd reaction was unreal.
