HNQQ: THE BOY FROM BRASIL

Henrique Oliveira tells DJ Mag that he was listening to electronic music for years before he decided he wanted to get involved and create his own music. He was a breakdancer before he threw himself into dance music, and as his home city of Curitiba is quite a big city, he was able to come across an electronic music scene quite easily. “I’m pretty young, and at that time we had some open-air parties and clubs running great nights in Curitiba,” he says.

Catching the bug, he started putting on his own underground parties, and these soon grew beyond just the blueprint of friends getting together to dance to cool tracks. “I truly believe that small crowds can turn into big crowds as soon as they start to spread the music knowledge to other people,” Henrique says.

“Somehow, if it comes from the heart, every person making a part of that movement can help to improve their scene.”

His parties started putting on international DJs, and Henrique started using the name 'HNQO' for his production tracks, simply taking the initial letters from all of his names. Soon, Russ Yallop was checking out his deep tech tracks online, and Henrique got to meet Russ at BPM in Mexico at the Hot Creations present Paradise party. “It was a great night indeed,” he smiles.


Soon, HNQO tracks were appearing on Jamie Jones's Hot Creations, which naturally made Henrique very happy.

“It’s a big label with great exposure for their artists, I hope I can deliver some more original works for the label in the future,” he says, modestly.

'Point Of View', coming soon on Hot Creations, has that warm bass sound and a chillaxed retro-sounding vocal from Vicky Fee. The other track on the release, the more skippy 'Pain N Love' featuring Effluence, has a Portuguese vocal that sounds like it's saying “Let's skin up”. It's the latest from a DJ/producer whose star is completely in the ascendant.  


He starts raving about playing at Space in Santa Catarina in the south of Brazil, and how he hopes to play also at Club Vibe in Curitiba, Warung (also in Santa Catarina) and D-Edge in São Paulo. He's got a European tour coming up thanks to the Hot Creations connections, and is also putting efforts into his own label, Playperview.

“We are working hard to get the label bigger and give our artists better exposure,” he says. “It’s me, Fabø and Pako heading the work and thinking about how to make it happen. We have some great signings coming up such as H.O.S.H., Kolombo, Atapy, Dimitri Nakov, and we are also discussing terms to have MK, Pillowtalk and Kink to remix some of our artists' upcoming EPs.”