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Cristina | electronic music

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#30: Ciel

How could I have come this far (in numbers, but also in dragging this project along) without Ciel! Her first and only release so far includes one of my favourite tracks of 2017: “Elevate (Go Off Mix)” - a beautifully dreamy, percussion-heavy breakbeat track with melodies that are poppy in their on-point catchiness. It was released on Shanti Celete’s label Peach Discs, thus the result of joined forces of two great musical minds. 

Ciel’s DJ mixes have a wide range of the same on-point catchiness. In this breakbeat-heavy mix you have the bangers tightly arranged, one rubbing shoulders with the other. It gives off a sweat-drenched roughness which leaves little doubt that the New Year’s party where it was recorded must’ve been very good - at least. 

Apart from all that, Ciel is also a very political figure: She started being active in dance music through a radio station at school in her homebase Toronto. Four years of running her own show followed. Female musicians were the main focus of the show and she has carried this commitment on until today: “Work In Progress” is the name of her current radio show and party-series to give more representation to female-identifying producers and DJs in electronic music. Fittingly, she is also part of the Discwoman collective, enabling her a wider audience for her great music and important activism alike. Amplifying each other, as Discwoman likes to declare. 

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#29: Jlin

Jlin was a name I always heard of ever since her second album “Black Origami” was released past May. It reappeared in the end of year 2017-lists, where the album appeared in nearly every “Best Albums Of The Year 2017″. And it appeared for a third time - three is a lucky number, they say - when I attended a live set of her at Berlin’s CTM Festival. In its rhythmical complexity yet total and thrilling danceability it left me in awe. 

When Jlin, whose name is originally Jerrilynn Patton, released her debut album "Dark Energy” in 2015, it already made huge waves. Here was somebody coming from the roots of footwork, but bringing it somewhere else. Mixing it with various genres such as bass, club or world and so creating a unique and experimental sound. “Black Origami” is challenging to listen to and it takes a while to process. But at the end comes a realization that her live set transmitted even better: Jlin proves that “experimental” and “dancefloor-suitable” don’t have to be opposites. 

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#28: Avalon Emerson

This year there was definitely no getting around her: 2017 has been the year in which Avalon Emerson stepped into the spotlight as one of the most promising newcomers in techno. Her latest stroke of genius was the single “One More Flourescent Rush” on Whities, two sizzling, pulsating tracks, which enhance the sometimes monochrome spectrum of techno by a bright and imaginative palette. They are the newest of a short string of releases that show Emerson’s trademark style of a thick and juicy bass range with captivating, often longing melodies laid on top and becoming one. 

This style is already hearable in her first major release from 2016. Major in the sense that it really made waves and is now getting sold on Discogs for around double of its original price. The track titles (“2000 Species of Cacti”, “The Frontier”) flick out an imagery of a US-desert, a romanticized Nowhereland where nature still dominates humans. Crisp and raw. It’s also exactly what the music sounds like in its fullness and unpolished emotionality. And it pays tribute to Emerson’s origins: She is originally from Arizona. A US-state right in the middle of the former “frontier”.

In her remixes, Emerson equally manages to leave her own mark while maintaining the essence of a track. Take for example her remixes for Octo Octa’s “Adrift” or Lena Platonos’ “Lego” (both released on Honey Soundsystem): Both simply great works. 

So if this past year went this well for Emerson (we haven’t even talked about her DJing and the amount of her gigs), 2018 promises to be at least equally exciting for her. 

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#27: Deena Abdelwahed

I have to admit, my opinion of Deena Abdelwahed used to be medium-high. But it wasn’t fully formed yet. I based it on one remix by her for Bachar Mar-Kalifé I didn’t really like. So now that I have seen her name appear more often, I thought there has to be a point to her music. I dug a bit deeper and convinced myself that she is indeed a very interesting artist, standing at a unique point. 

First, I listened to this Discwoman mix of hers. Not really a DJ set, rather a mixtape. A mixtape made for huge halls, with lots of corners. Mystical and pulsating electronica. You hear some oriental-sounding influences as well. Just like in her music. Because listening to her own productions is the other thing I did. In her debut EP “Klabb”, released past march, Abdelwahed fuses futuristic and sinister-sounding electronica with arab influences. The latter can be traditional oriental percussion or vocals in Arabic - mostly sampled, but in part also sung by Abdelwahed herself. She is one of the few people to fully develop this fusion, embedding the music of her home culture (Abdelwahed is from Tunisia, but grew up in Qatar) into experimental electronic music. The contrast between repression in Tunisia Abdelwahed was confronted with and the hedonistic freedom of dance culture is political in itself, and she wants to emphasize that. The vocals sung by herself for example are a direct message towards homophobia in Tunisia, as she tells here. This political aspect only adds to the impact her music seems promising to have. 

Klabb by Deena Abdelwahed

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#26: Ellen Allien

A series like this is pretty much unthinkable without Ellen Allien. She has been on the forefront of electronic music since the very beginning and has remained relevant and thoroughly contemporary till today. 

Ellen Allien started out in the early nineties as a bartender in one of the legendary Berlin bars Fischlabor. Quickly she moved from the bar to the DJ booth. In 1999 she founded her own label, BPitch Control, which grew to be one of the defining labels of the naughties and raised dance music stars like Paul Kalkbrenner. 

Her long experience helps explain how she masters her craft expertly while touring constantly. Out of her range from techno to acidic house - but always with a kind of roughness -  she just knows what to pick. She makes people dance. And in that sense, she is the truest form of DJ. 

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#25: Nastia

The focus of the international raver community has been wandering east for a long time. After eastern Germany came middle eastern European cities such as Belgrade. Now the focus has arrived at the very outskirts of Europe. Kiew is there, and Kiew is where Nastia is from. A female DJ from an ex-soviet country, who highly fulfills the required “professional beauty qualification”, really likes to use social media and plays techno? Somehow, a comparison to Nina Kraviz seems at hand.

Needless to say, both are hard to compare. Let’s start musically: Parting from her love for techno, Nastia can also go in a very minimal direction - or play Drum’n’Bass. Her DJ-sets are coherent in themselves, but the style of the set can be very different. In a sense, that is what DJs are supposed to do: Cater to the situation and not strictly to their own taste. Her mix for Cocoon Ibiza (apart from her local scene around the club Closer and her festival Strichka in Kiew, Nastia is now part of that family, too) seems to follow this same paradigma. It’s nearly only house, fast, with loads of party-demanding hi-hats, but also relaxed sugarcoat of melodies on top. How else should parties in Ibiza sound?

Also regarding the public personality she has assembled for herself, Nastia is unique. She is one of few female DJs who thoroughly discuss motherhood. When she took over the Instagram account of Resident Advisor for a week, Nastia adressed the topic in one post. On her personal account, her daughter is an ever-returning presence. You might discuss if children need to be shown in public representations overall. But to place a picture of your daughter, saying you miss her, between “classic” DJ pics and portraits is brave and honest, in my opinion. It adds an important part of what women experience in their life to the bigger picture. 

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#24: Moor Mother

I learned about Moor Mother probably the best way one can learn about an artist: at a festival, not even knowing who she was before. Her performance at CTM left me back amazed and disturbed at the same time.

Moor Mother is Camae Ayewa from Philadelphia and there actually is hardly any music suited better to these current shaken-up and, honestly, sad times of society and politics. Her content is deeply political, she adresses the history and present of black people (especially, but not only in the US). Racism, violence, disequalities and the reality of being a black woman.

Moor Mother raps, but her tone has a rawness that is something else. When it is necessary, she can use her voice to the point of screaming. Punk and blank. The intensity of her voice increases with the instrumentals she produces. Nothing danceable, instead sounds that screech, decay and bounce with no apparent song-structure. They might creep you out or make you aggressive, but they surely create huge atmospheric bubbles. Some organic samples of wooden instruments give a sense of referencing the past.

Her work as an artist also includes Black Quantum Futurism, which is a mixture of a theoretical concept, a perspective on life and hands-on activistic work. Ayewa is one of the two central figures who basically created it, together with Rasheedah Phillips. Black Quantum Futurism is a way to deal with the past and the future at the same time. It is part of the bigger theoretical branch Afrofuturism, which is in turn part of the narrative of Drexciya’s music. 

As an artistic whole, Moor Mother’s music is far from normal, but again, that is how all the problems she sings about should be too - not normal day-to-day life, but instead vanished. 

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#23: Umfang

There is no way this series could happen without mentioning any of the gals behind the queerfeministic Discwoman collective. Umfang is the one who has been killing it most recently, because she just released her second album “Symbolic Use Of Light” this summer. It is a perfectly round mix of pure techno and ambient tracks, thoughtful somehow, leaving space for reflection, but also pumping and shooting straight up to the dancefloor. Having been released on Technicolour, a sister label of Ninja Tune, it is a sign of Emma Burgess-Olson rising popularity and, obviously, her musical integrity. 

Originally from Kansas, she got into electronic music as a teenager and began djing in 2009. In 2013 New York City, she started to promote a party now called "Technofeminism" together with a friend, Beta Librae. It was her first major action for giving people a space in electronic music who usually wouldn’t have it. This, but specifically for female-identifying people, is also the goal of Discwoman. Umfang founded the party series, booking agency and collective together with Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson and Christine McCharen-Tran in 2014. Satisfying to see, Umfang and Discwoman are increasingly getting the space they reclaimed not only for others, but also for themselves. 

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#22: The Black Madonna

And we continue with the religious connection, The Black Madonna. The Black Madonna is actually called Marea Stamper. She is originally from Kentucky. First special thing about her: She actually is a practicing catholic. So her name is just not some stupid joke. Second special thing about her: She has been DJing for around 20 years, but has only come into the spotlight in the past couple of years. She “couldn’t even play the opening of closet” until three years ago, as she says herself in this excellent video report. It started out with her becoming the booker at the club Smartbar in Chicago. This eventually gave way though to a tour schedule of inhumane dimension. If you take a look at her intensively used social media accounts, you will notice that Stamper has weekends where she doesn’t sleep at all. She seems to be on the run always, only to be happy to come back to her husband and dog (you may notice, I follow her live). 

Religion, marriage and a pet at home - these things may make you picture a woman quite different than Stamper stands for. Because she is also an activist. Also on her social media accounts, you will find that she advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, POC’s rights and fiercely hates Donald Trump. In interviews she reveals her well-reflected views on the status quo of the scene. Her music has the sound of the club culture’s roots and of respect and tolerance: She play loads of disco mixed with energetic house and her sets can be serious dancefloor killers. In terms of producing, her output has usually been convincing, successfully mastering that line between upbeat and corniness. Due to her mentioned tour schedule I guess though, she doesn’t come around to producing as much. But as long as Stamper keeps on living her dream, that is fine with me. 

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#21: Resom

After another little break longer than planned, we resume the list of awesome DJs with Resom. Just this past weekend I saw her DJ for the second time and my good impression of her was reassured. Principally this is based on subjectiveness, because Resom simply has a taste very similar to mine. She mixes dub-influenced, subtle house with some sprinkles of electro, bass and breakbeat. I would locate her style close to the whole British Hessle Audio crew. She herself says that she is really into that UK sound, because it has soul. And that rings true for her sets, full of subtle twists and melodies that give the cool electronic music life.

Geographically though Resom is from a different place: Originally from Thüringen (a state in the east of Germany), she studied and grew in terms of electronic music in Leipzig, becoming friends with for example Kassem Mosse and Mix Mup. She too stands up for gender equality in electronic music. From 2008 to 2011 she organized a series of DJ workshops for females (called Do It Herself) in Leipzig, amongst other things. This political stance continues towards her residency at ://about blank in Berlin, a traditionally left-wing club managed and led by a collective. Apart from residencies though, she is quite “free” because as she doesn’t release any own productions, she is not bound to any label. Free and eclectic as her musical selections are, Resom is really one of my favourites at the moment. 

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#20: Laurel Halo

Laurel Halo is one of those names I remember hearing about since the time I got into dance music. Somehow though, I never really knew who she was. I only pictured this Halo of her fictional surname, which does kind of fit with the surreal appeal of her productions. Based at the label Hyperdub, her music parts from the bass focus of the label, off into an experimental IDM direction. She likes to use her voice as an otherworldly instrument to shape fantastic soundscapes with lots of space for reflection. 

With her latest album “Dust”, Halo’s sound has become more organic. The sound palette is warm and natural, rich in drums and field recordings. She assembles cacophonies and rhythmic chaos in some tracks, only to place beautiful melodies in others and in the best moments, she pairs those things. “Dust” seems to reflect what I was lucky to witness in a DJ set of hers, but what also can be heard in her recorded mixes, such as her latest mix for Discwoman. Her influences are various, they range from crazed out dub over to tropical choirs to aggressive bass tracks (many!) and even pounding techno. Halo manages to arrange these diverging things in an order that actually makes sense. She is a presence in the electronic music scene as firm as the halo of the Virgin Mary (couldn’t resist a halo joke here). 

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#19: Dr. Rubinstein

Due to personal tastes, this list has not been focusing too much on techno artists. Dr. Rubinstein is an exception. Her electro-heavy and deeply textured, intelligently transforming Resident Advisor mix is accountable for that. It is an exceptional mix, and it even gets to you when you are not standing on a dark dance floor with 500 other people, but when you are at home by yourself. 

Rubinstein is Marina Rubinstein’s actual surname, but I find it interesting as a DJ moniker, because it is gender neutral. I remember noticing my own strong gender bias when I started reading her name on the Berghain line-up - I (sadly) assumed she was a man. But no, Dr. Rubinstein is a woman, and also one whose public image is quite the contrary of other techno artists. She doesn’t need to make this whole “faceless” or “darkness” thing many DJs like to do. She just presents herself as she is, in very natural and (surprise!) colourful press shots. Since she started out DJing, shortly after moving to Berlin, Dr. Rubinstein has had a steadily rising number of gigs and built an actual career. No productions are in sight, she has remained strictly a DJ. You can now see her play around the whole world, with gigs scheduled about every weekend. It is nice to see a success well-deserved and based on honest skills. 

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#18: Natasha Kmeto

After many women who are primarily DJs and producers of electronic dance music aiming at the dance floor, today we have an electronic music producer who does not produce club tracks. It’s no ambient either. It is rather pop music, at its best.

The instrumentals are purely electronic and would probably make for a good dance track. Kmeto produces them herself, which is why she clearly belongs in this list of producers and DJs. Kmeto prefers a reduced programming which leads to a certain rawness - behind every chord is an extra stack of power. That the beats sometimes sound influenced by bass music only matches that.

Paired with her voice, the music becomes the pop mentioned initially. Kmeto has been using her voice since the beginning, but only at her second album “Inevitable” is becomes the central element of her music: It conveys strength (think the force of Christina Aguilera), but at the same time vulnerability (think Beyoncé). The voice in itself expresses emotions (for example when she “oooh”s), but this is even enhanced by the lyrics. She sings about her coming out and love, all very personal. “Inevitable” recounts a love story with its struggles and confusions, her latest single “Pour Down” responds to love with power. Powerful is also what her live shows are said to be, therefore it is to hope that the Portland-based musician will travel the stages of this world sooner than later. 

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#17: Lena Willikens

Lena Willikens is one of the “new” German DJs who have gained international recognition in the past few years. She is from Cologne, and is closely affiliated the local (though in the neighbouring city Düsseldorf) “Club Des Amateurs”, which is run by Tolouse Low Trax. After having worked there at the door and at the bar, she started her career as a DJ there and is now a resident. This already points in her musical direction: A base ranging from house over electro to techno, but all in a weird way, with inspirations in kraut and wave, radiating psychedelic vibes and darkness. This wild mix is hearable in her sets as well as in her productions. Well, technically she only has one EP out to date. But it has this great balance of danceable and then totally weird tracks. One of the weirder ones which reminds me of her namesake Lena Platonos is this one: 

Lena Platonos is the link to the present: On the recently released remix EP of her latest reissued album “Sun Masks”, Willikens contributed a dancefloor-suitable mix with just the right amount of melody and irritation. If you want to get an impression of one of her DJ sets, the most recent one was recorded at “Mutual Dreaming”, the party run by Aurora Halal (number 6). The beat only slowly goes towards four-to-the-floor after the first hour (!). At a party, that is brave and unique - and simply Lena Willikens.  

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#16: Octo Octa

So, it is now time for part two of the 31 women. I had actually drafted this post already quite a while ago, but just about two weeks ago, Octo Octa was the target of a wave of transphobia and hate. They were caused by a video of the “RA Sessions”, in which Octo Octa perfoms a great short live set. Some stupid people didn’t like that and hated on her. There also came a lot of support for her and acclaim for her performance. But the reactions sadly show that transphobia is very much a thing, even in a community that has trans people at its very origins and praises itself for its diversity. 

Octo Octa aka Maya Bouldry-Morrison has been on the landscape of dance music for some years. Her first single “Let Me See You” was released back in 2011 on the LA-based label 100% Silk. It introduces a feature that will appear throughout her discography until today, the breakbeat. I remember how it was one of my personal summer hits that year, with its upbeat piano chords and poppy synth melodies. I had discovered it on Gerd Janson’s Groove mix and played it again and again and again by the pool.

Her second LP “Between Two Selves” was released in 2013. It features flurry and big, emotional house tracks such as “Please Don’t Leave”. Its title and the cover are already indicators for an important decision Bouldry-Morrison dared to finally make this year: She came out as trans. Her third album "Where Are We Going?" fully celebrates this. It is a statement of personal freedom, starting already with the cover. She shows herself completely, in a firm and decisive posture, with an awkward but somehow satisfied smile. The music has this smile too. The opener shows a great deal of optimism and curiosity for what is to come, with synth stabs over dreamy pads and chill melodies. Occasionally it steps back on the thoughtful part and goes for fast-paced frenzy instead. But the melancholic Octo Octa is still there, and bittersweet melodies paired with washing synth-waves leave the listeners some moments for contemplating. Especially the closer “Where Are We Going Part 2″ has a melancholic yet happy love-it-all vibe. 

As a DJ, Bouldry-Morrison is (even more) upbeat, as this mix for Groove shows. It is an excerpt of her set at this year’s Horse Meat Disco pride party and if you hear it, you can't think other than that the party must have been great. Piano house, vocal house, melodic house - the mix just says fun, fun, fun and the energy goes up, up, up. 

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Press the "pause"-button

Since the 15th there have been no more posts. This has happened due to a spontaneous change of my plans, which makes me unable to continue the project in the next days in the way I would like to do. And because I don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the information or the writing, I decided to press the “pause”-button for the next days. I'm sorry to say that "31 Days - 31 Women" will be back around the 28th of July and therefore extend until August. I’m

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#15: LNS

The past few numbers posed a break from the quite electro-heavy start, so that now I’m able to present yet another electro artist: LNS.

LNS is a producer from Vancouver. Her discography is not bad for being so short - first release on 1080p, second release on Freakout Cult, a label run by Jayda G and DJ Sotofett and this month a spacey ambient track produced together with Sotofett. Obviously it’s not only the labels making her Oeuvre impressive, but more importantly her music. She produces that kind of outerworldly electro reminiscent of Convextion and the likes. That kind of electro that touches you emotionally while staying totally cool.

https://youtu.be/u5vcvK3TQes

It was also on a party that I came to, to see Sotofett play, where I then heard her. I had previously known about her latest records, but that set convinced me that she really is somebody to keep an eye on. She just greatly mixes energetic and decadent electro with some slices of melancholy, in her productions as well as some DJ-sets.

https://soundcloud.com/trushmix/trushmix-104-lns