DJ MetraGnome on The 59th Degree

We speak to DJ MetraGnome about Scotland's answer to Boiler Room, 59th Degree

Feature by Becca Inglis | 17 Jul 2017

“I was going to go and get a job in social media marketing,” reveals Owen Auskerry, aka drum 'n' bass/garage DJ MetraGnome. “Get a suit, do the job, and know that I was probably going to put my head through the wall constantly.” Lucky for his landlord (and for thousands of underground music fans), Auskerry has found a different use for his Edinburgh flat. We're sitting in the home of his digital venture, 59th Degree. 

Auskerry has been broadcasting live guest DJ sets on Facebook since December last year. In those few months, his fan base has jumped from 300 followers to over 2,500, with each video garnering between 8,000 and 16,000 views during the two-hour broadcast, and then doubling over the next 48 hours. “I still can’t quite believe the numbers,” he says. “In the promotional video I did before going live, I said that in the last four months we’d got 44,000 views. Well, I now get over 70,000 a month.”

59th Degree is essentially Scotland’s answer to Boiler Room, taking its name from the Orkney island that Auskerry grew up on, 59 degrees north of the equator. This allusion to one of Scotland’s more far-flung corners suggests a focus on musicians outside the central belt. “If you live in Edinburgh, you often see a lot of the same warm-up acts over and over again, because they’re easy,” Auskerry explains. “You maybe get a new headliner every so often but you don’t get all the headliners from Inverness or Ayr or wherever. You can only hear them if you go to Ayr or to Inverness. What I’m trying to do is show that every town, every city, has got good DJs.”

Auskerry describes practically tripping over DJs as he travels around, but still finds some places too small, isolated, or scattered about, struggling to sustain a scene that can house them: “You couldn’t put on a bassline night. You’d have to put on a bass night and have drum and bass and everything in there, because you’ve only got twenty people in the whole town to play.” Auskerry knows all about remote living. He himself grew up with only his family and no mains power on the Isle of Orkney. “It’s quite an alternative lifestyle but I absolutely loved it,” he says. Now, he devotes his time to unearthing DJs from all over the country and connecting them to new listeners. “The idea is that we promote the Scottish scene. The underground DJ scene.”

It's also about discovering new artists. Auskerry might not book would-be DJs straightaway, but he will invite them to his flat to practise. Refacta and Gchung for example, two garage/bassline DJs from North Berwick, had never performed a live set before approaching him. “They asked before I went live, so before December. They have been messaging me with new mixes constantly since then. I got them round twice before, and the last time they came round they had it.” A chance cancellation by another performer freed up a space for the pair to play, who then broke the record for being the most watched video on MetraGnome’s page with 16,000 views. That figure has only now been surpassed by Mrs Magoo on 25,000.

It's not just the new that needs promoting. “Lots of DJs get forgotten because they’re not promoting themselves and there’s fresh blood,” Auskerry points out. “That doesn’t mean that they’ve not still got gold in their selection of tunes.” Social media isn't for everyone, and many DJs would rather spend their time playing music than managing a Facebook account. That means not everyone worth listening to manages to get their name out. Auskerry's looking to rectify that: “I build the platform, and then they come and play. They don’t need followers on Facebook. They just need to be really good on the decks.”

The idea for 59th Degree came last year while Auskerry was recovering from a brain aneurysm. It severely impacted his speech – “I literally forgot my vocabulary, I forgot the words!” he tells us – and his short term memory. Unable to work, but still keen to develop his craft, Auskerry invited DJs to play back-to-back sessions in his flat. “I love playing with other DJs. I feel like it’s more of a challenge. Also you’re playing off each other so you can hype each other a lot more.” With help from his best friend (and favourite back-to-back partner) DJ Drowzee, Auskerry posted recordings of these sessions to Facebook. “From there it just snowballed,” he says. “I currently have a list of 26 DJs lined up to play at some point, and six weeks booked ahead.”

Central to Auskerry’s plans to go live was ensuring quality video and audio. “At that point everybody was using their phone and just having it near a speaker. I sat watching them thinking, ‘Would I watch a whole hour of that? No!’ If I was going to go live, it was going to look good.” It took him two months to work out the logistics. He now uses multiple cameras, graphics and software on top of the Facebook app, but on the island Auskerry grew up on there was no computer until he was 14: “The most technological thing I had was my Fisher Price tape recorder,” he tells us. This is what sets the 59th Degree apart from other DIY live videos, especially Boiler Room. The stream looks good but also maintains the unpolished feel of a bedroom gig, not least because it's filmed in Auskerry’s room.

When pressed on the differences between 59th Degree and Boiler Room, Auskerry emphasises its fun and inclusive spirit. “We’re sillier!” he exclaims. “I’m a bit silly and I like a bit silly.” He feels that Boiler Room now takes itself too seriously, although puts that down to the pressures of having a global reach. It's a problem that he sees with the underground music scene in general. “Why should a DJ not look like they’re having fun while they’re DJing? I’ve never understood that. If I, as a DJ, am not enjoying what I’m playing, why should you?” The last thing Auskerry tells his guests on 59th Degree before going live is to remember to smile. “We look like we’re having fun, and we are.”

Auskerry’s light-hearted approach seems to be working. Nowadays, within the first 20 seconds of a video going live, around 60 people will be watching. 59th Degree has become a staple to many people’s Thursday evenings. “People say lovely things. I got a guy the other day in Oxford. He lives in the middle of nowhere and he’s not been to a club in two years because he lives too far away. He says that the 59th Degree has become a good source of his music, and he’s really hyped for Thursday at six o’clock.”

What’s next for 59th Degree? Auskerry is preparing a new logo, website, and Facebook page (he currently runs it from his DJ MetraGnome account). He aims to get 1,000 followers in the first month and hopes to reach double figures by the end of the year. He also hopes to travel: “If this is true in Scotland that there is this much talent that is not heard of, there’s got to be sound everywhere.”

Auskerry envisages the 59th Degree promoting underground music all over the world, but with Scotland and the UK still at its core. “Even if we go abroad, we’re getting international artists to play for us. And we’re representing the British scene abroad.” This is crucial at a time when more venues are closing in Edinburgh. Using digital tools, artists can find new places to play their music live, and on a global scale.

It was partly experiencing the underground first-hand in the old Bongo Club that made Auskerry want to contribute to it. “I still remember walking in and thinking, ‘If I go through this, if I experience these nights, if I have this much fun, and I don’t ever put a bit back in'... that’s what it was about. To try and make a bit of it how I wanted it to be." And concludes, "I think now, with the experience I’m getting, I could do this in some form for the rest of my life. Be that radio, be that setting up a stream – I feel like this is the scene that I want to be in.”

https://www.facebook.com/DJMetraGnome/