Buntai are everywhere. From festival sets, to headlining popular club venues, to putting on their own parties- the DJ collective have accomplished a huge amount whilst growing their fan base for the past 5 years. With their beginning step up coming from joint sets with the likes of Lava La Rue and Nine8 Collective, it was clear that Buntai were going to make a mark in the multi genre collective scene. Don’t believe us? Check them out at Hootananny Brixton on Saturday 10th May, they dropped their insane lineup last week.
Inspired by their unique brand and authentic group chemistry, we wanted to find out what makes Buntai so original. We sat down with Akira, founder of Buntai, to find out what sets them apart from the other DJ collectives on the scene.
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What does the day-to-day look like for Buntai?
The day-to-day changes quite a lot, it depends on season and how busy bookings might be. I also work in a pub part-time, so lots of my life is revolving around that.
Most of it is me and Mia hunting for signing new music. Mia is on top of the art stuff. It feels like most of the workload is hers because the visual side is probably the most important part of the whole brand. She does every single aspect of that.
We both work in the pub together and we live together so we’ll often come home from a shift at like 2am, then laptops out; I’ll be going through music and she’ll be designing. Balancing the label, the events and also trying to be a DJ… you have to be a Jack of all trades if you want to do this.
Sounds hectic. How do your backgrounds in fashion and music inspire each other?
They go hand in hand. When I started to really care about fashion at age 13/14, it was also tied into the music that I had started listening to. I wanted to dress how the artists that I liked were dressing. It’s different with electronic music; a lot of the time the producers aren’t on the same kind of forefront that rappers or bigger A-list stars might be. But I definitely feel that my love for wanting to create clothes back in the day came from the music I loved. In terms of fashion now we aren’t really putting out loads of clothes. But it definitely has an impact.
Okay, so what is the origin story of Buntai?
It originally started when I was about 14/15. It was just selling clothes. I did that purely because I couldn’t afford the clothes that I wanted, I loved ASAP Rocky when I was younger. That was all very expensive fashion. So I started making clothes to cover the cost of mine and to also sell clothes that were cheaper. That was the idea. The name Buntai translates to ‘squad’ and that was the embodiment that I wanted it to be. I wasn’t trying to make it some brand that was selling to everyone, I was selling it to people I knew. That’s where the name came from. Then I stopped doing it for a period, when I was around 17-20, I kind of went a bit off the tracks and didn’t really care about it. In lockdown I restarted it with Mia. She’d always said that she’d be there whenever I felt like I wanted to go back and do it. We had been friends from when we were around 16 so by the time I was ready to bring it up, we did it together and made it into this record label and event.
How do you feel that your music has evolved from the beginning to where you are now?
I think the sound has matured quite a lot but the Buntai sound changes based on my music taste, which is probably quite bad because a lot of the original fan base that we brought in were drum & bass fans! Then I went through a phase where I was listening to loads of speed garage and house for a bit, and that is all we put out. Now I’m listening to dubstep, electro and grime and that’s all I’m booking. I think it just evolves, which is healthy because you shouldn’t put yourself in a box. I just say that we’re multi-genre because I can’t pin it down to one thing.
What are the challenges of being multi genre?
Just understanding what sound we’re trying to represent. Because I think you do need to have a base and a foundation of what you are. The fanbase needs to link you to something, even if it’s a bit broader.
Buntai on the Climate Live bus at Boomtown 2024
So Buntai’s foundation is more of a vibe than it is a particular sound?
Yeah, it’s more like a family thing. A collective. I want people to look at us and not see us as a record label or event but as a group of people that you want to be around. You want to come to the parties for us rather than for the headliner we’ve booked. Everyone that comes to our parties is a part of the family. We’re all on the dancefloor, not backstage, not mingling, we’ll be on the front-line dancing with you. That’s something I want the fanbase to know.
So did you expect that Buntai would just stay within the friend group or did you have goals to take off as much as you have?
I don’t know what I expected at first. I wrote down some goals that I had for 5 years, up until now basically, and they all got ticked off quite quickly. I think that we were quite lucky because of the stuff with Nine8 (@nine8collective), like Lava La Rue basically just put us on. It felt like we almost skipped a few steps to getting to where we were. There was no time to think about the change, it just happened. I didn’t expect it to leave the friendship as quick as it did but I was hoping that one day it would.
Yeah, that’s been a very rapid rise
The only issue that came from the quick success was it felt quite hard to top what we had done. I had a 5-year goal to play at Fabric, and on our 1-year anniversary of Buntai we got to run one of the rooms at Fabric. It just felt so surreal. That shouldn’t have happened so quickly. Now I want a Fabric room again, it’s like how do we top what we did in the beginning?
That’s pretty amazing. If you had to pick a favourite set, small or big, that you’re really proud of how you played, what would it be?
The one that always comes to mind is playing at Venue MOT, maybe like 2 years ago, with an MC called Nanka (@nxnka). That was the proudest of a show in the moment I’ve been. Apart from that, one of my favourites was Outlook Croatia 2024 with Jaz (@jaz.imsky) and Modula (@nickmodula), that was a lot of fun. It was one of the most fun I’ve had.
When you’re booked for a festival do you have a process that goes into curating your set?
I just plan the intro. So I plan like the first 3 songs. Obviously it depends on what festival it is and what time you’re playing. You envision certain things that you might want to play or that you can’t play because it’s not the right time or vibe. I think once you have the intro of what you think is going to work, you can then assess the reaction and go off what you think is best. Don’t get me wrong I have prepared sets but the vast majority are freestyle. Especially when you’re playing with someone, because they’re going to throw you curveballs and you’ve got to navigate your way through it so you can’t really prepare for those things.
I wanted to know what you think sets Buntai apart from other DJ collectives?
I want people to know us and recognise it as a collective and friend crew party, as opposed to just an event that you’d be buying tickets for and not knowing who runs it.
I think about all the events I went to growing up and had no clue who was running them. When I’ve been to parties where you know the work that’s gone in and you know the people who were putting it on, it makes it more special. You feel the magic in the air.
I want people to feel close to us. Like they can come and chill and not be pushed away. There are so many people in music that don’t want to hang out and only want to be seen with certain people. I hate that. I’ve been in situations where I’m being pushed away and disregarded and it fucking sucks. So I just want people to know that we are the opposite of that and you come to the party to party with us as well as to have your normal Friday night.
I like that. Buntai is kind of the antithesis of all the bad things you see in the music industry.
For sure!
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Because you guys seem like such a close-knit collective, what do you look for when you’re looking for someone to join? Are there specific qualities, sounds or traits you look for?
I think it really is, we just have to get along. There are people that I’ve brought into Buntai that don’t produce or aren’t really good at DJing. It’s not about that, it’s about just being a friend. Buntai was built off of friendship. The same way I wanted to sell clothes to people who couldn’t afford it, I want to give sets to people who haven’t had them yet. Just be a friend. You can’t force it, sometimes you have DMs of people wanting to join but it doesn’t work like that. I have to meet you at one of the events and we have to naturally become friends. But it’s not hard to do that, we’ve built such a big group of friends over the last few years. I didn’t know anyone when I started the music and it’s built up over time. It does happen.
So to sign-out, tell us one more thing. If someone reading this article hasn’t heard of Buntai before, what’s one thing they should take away?
Give it a go. People aren’t partying as much these days and I think if you’re looking for a new night out and something to try then come and give it a go. In these days even I don’t go out as much, I think a mix of the cost of living and there just not being good enough events on. All these big brands, venues, and companies have so much money to put on massively good events- it makes it so that smaller venues and promoters just can’t compete. That’s why so many venues are closing at an insane rate. Give your local promoter a chance. Give your local venue a chance. 9/10 times you’ll probably have a better night out with one of them than you would at one of these big club raves that you see advertised anywhere.
