As 2014 comes to a close, most dance music fans have become familiarized with the name Botnek. The Canadian duo started the year with a rendition of Martin Garrix' “Animals“, quickly followed by a massive collaboration with 3LAU called “Vikings“. A few litres of magic koolaid later and the fan-favorite remix of “Selfie” erupted. If none of this rings a bell, you've probably been living under a rock for the last 12 months.
Last weekend, I went on a mission to learn about the men behind the Botnek. What did I learn? Like most of us, they love dance music, video games, tropical fruits, and Blink 182… Ok, maybe most of us don't actually like Blink 182, but Botnek does, and in this article, that's all that matters.
Q: We all love the music. But what about the rest of you? What do you guys do?
A: “We play Mario Kart on tour, forever, all the time. We're very into Mario Kart, we love it.”
Inevitably, we got sidetracked into a discussion of how Canadians pronounce “Mario”. In case you were wondering how it's supposed to be pronounced, check out this YouTube video (first, read the rest of the article).
Q: Who are your favorite characters?
A: “I always pick Yoshi. Yoshi has the right combination of agility and weight so you can’t knock him off the road. Bowser is too heavy. Mario is just a key character, he’s the raddest. It’s funny, when I’m playing by myself, just one player like tournament style, Donkey Kong Jr. is No. 1 all the time. The computer is better at being Donkey Kong Jr.”
We moved on.
Q: What're your favorite TV shows?
A: “Breaking Bad, obviously. It's just assumed that everyone likes it. If someone doesn't like Breaking Bad they should bring that up like: ‘I don’t like Breaking Bad.’ Wooaah are you a real person, or are you a Terminator?”
Speaking of television: Botnek easily identifies their hometown as being like the setting of “Trailer Park Boys”.
Q: What's your favorite fruit?
A: Kiwi / Pineapple
“I’m a fiend for pineapple. I love pineapple. It’s my favorite thing in the entire world. There’s so much sugar in it. It’s amazing.”
In case you were wondering, there's more than triple the amount of sugar content in 1 pineapple then in 3 cans of Redbull. I couldn't compete with their stimulated level of enthusiasm for fruit – we talked about beer instead:
“When we show up in a city we haven't been to we like to have local beers. We try the beers of the world. We document it; as much as we can remember, at least.”
Finally, we had to talk about music, and there was obviously no better decade for music then the '90s so the guys gave me their favorites:
'90s EDM: The Prodigy / Chemical Brothers
'90s Non-EDM: Deftones / Blink 182
We totally enjoyed getting to know the guys from Botnek. If you aren't familiar with their music you should wait 5 minutes and then check out their facebook page and soundcloud profile.
Big thanks to Botnek, the Dim Mak crew, and Oscar Wylde for helping make this awesome.
