abs8lute

Hello, thank you for having me! I recently played a b2b set to open before Truncate and Adriana Lopez at Fvtvr in Paris. I was playing with Keut, who is the founder of Kluster (a collective and record label that I am now part of as an Artistic Director). We have a similar vision of music and safer spaces in night life, so it was super fun to share the booth with him, especially for an opening: we decided to start slowly with 130 bpm tracks, hypnotic textures and organic rhythms and then build up to 140 bpm and more energetic and groovy tracks. Much to our surprise, the crowd arrived quite early to experience the set and hear it evolve. We really felt a connection there, great moment.

Basically, what I’m trying to do is create the safe space I needed as a POC queer woman when I started working in the industry twelve years ago, but for the newcomers. I entered the music world thanks to a music blog I created and then by working as a communications assistant for a big Parisian venue. I’ve had the chance to have a good mentor and I was not directly discriminated against but what I felt was more insidious as it was systemic. All the DJs were mostly cis white male and I rarely met POC working in the industry or even in the public. So much so that it made me question my sense of belonging to the techno scene. It’s only by reading and learning about the history of house and techno music that I realised I was as legitimate as anyone.
Therefore, to help newcomers or even isolated emerging artists from the minorities, I decided to take action in my own small way. This mostly goes through sorority and adelphity as well as training and representation. I created my FLINTA collective, Vénus Club, three years ago, with which I launched a DJing program for FLINTA and I also give DJing classes and mentoring sessions for minorities (queer and POC cis men included) with adapted pricing.

During these classes, we give our participants space to learn and experience DJing in safer conditions and on real setups thanks to a Parisian venue that offers us its space and gear for the lessons. We also allow them to connect with other learners in order to counter the competitive mindset and the gatekeeping that can exist in our industry. We keep spots in our event programmation to give the participants their first gig opportunities as well.
The best reward I get from this is when a ‘student’ writes to tell me that they managed to get their first gig by themselves or that they managed to negotiate a fair fee without letting their impostor syndrome speak.

Knowing that I come well-prepared often puts me in a good headspace to perform. I spend a lot of time thinking about music, the emotions I want to transmit, and the journey I would like to offer according to the venue, the public, and the time slot. I also spend a lot of time digging and classifying all my tracks to allow my creativity to speak more easily when I play.
I just love thinking about music  and what I do. I mean, two years ago I had to juggle my activities on the music scene with a full-time job in advertising. Now I get to only do what I love. How lucky am I?! I also just get excited by the event in itself: I love partying, I love dancing so I get hyped up by just thinking about the venue getting crowded, the ambiance and getting the amazing opportunity to play my selection on a club soundsystem.

It’s a bit trickier; I don’t enjoy recording as much since it’s just me in front of my decks without the energy of a crowd. So my preparation is more focused on my mental state and how to create that energy I’m not getting from a crowd by myself.

I do craft my sets slightly differently for specific audiences. Positive Education is well-known in France to be very qualitative and forward-thinking in terms of programmation. Therefore, I know the public comes with great expectations: they are not just there to party hard but they want to discover new upcoming artists, they want to hear more tailored sets, and they want to experience real journeys. It’s actually amazing because it gives us a greater freedom of expression since we know they’ll be more receptive and won’t expect only 4/4 techno all set long.

Those festivals definitely have a part to play. They choose to take more risks with their programme in order to offer something different and qualitative. They don’t just go for the easy options like huge headliners but they already look for what’s different, therefore, they have leeway to also pay attention to include more diverse artists. And by doing so they definitely contribute to give more legitimacy to these artists by allowing them to appear on such forward-thinking line-ups.

Positive Education and similar festivals almost always start by pushing the local scenes and it’s so important. Sometimes it’s not necessary to look too far to find super talented artists, and I feel like here in France there might be a slight deconnexion between the public and the local DJs. People don’t pay as much attention to the line-ups as they used to. I feel like they mostly focus on either the headliners or the name of the event. But if we want the scene to stay lively and vibrant, we need to allow new artists to emerge. And how exciting is it to witness the evolution of an artist that you see going from local resident DJ to a touring headliner?! As the saying goes: support your local DJs!

It somehow does since I try to playlist a fair share of FLINTA, queer, and POC producers. It forces me to dig consciously and thoroughly. I also ask the FLINTA artists I know to send me their unreleased tracks if they are willing in order to play them in podcasts and share the IDs. I know some people will say that the genre and ethnicity of the producers shouldn’t count when digging and I’m right there with them, it shouldn’t count but it does. We live in times where chances are not equal and therefore actions like that need to be done to accompany emerging artists from the minorities.

I do stay updated on music trends because I think it’s always important and interesting to know what is going on and what people enjoy the most at a certain point in time. However, I don’t try to incorporate it at any cost in my sets. Sometimes it can be interesting to do so in order to modernise my style a bit or to bring something different that the audience will connect with more easily.
For instance, hardgroove is definitely a genre that is trending nowadays; I’m not particularly a fan of it and I wouldn’t play a whole set of hardgroove, but I sometimes can add a couple of tracks to my sets to bring a different flavour. But trends change rapidly so my style has to be mine regardless of trends. Also I feel like the kind of techno I play is timeless so it shouldn’t be and doesn’t need to be dictated by trends.

So usually what I do when I come back home or to my hotel room is take a good shower and then watch an episode of reality TV show. It can go from RuPaul’s Drag Race to Top Chef, or Love Is Blind, or The Voice or Dancing With The Stars. I just need something chill and good vibes, with the right amount of drama, to ease off the pressure and the adrenaline and wind down.

Three years ago I started pole dancing. I am still a beginner as I really just take it as a fun new thing to learn but it’s also my way of staying in shape as it is so physically demanding—I’ve never had stronger abs and glutes! It also helps me with my self-confidence, my perception of my body and myself, which has an incidence on how I feel when I am DJing in front of a crowd and how I have to let myself stand in the spotlight and be seen.

When I play, my main goal is definitely to make the crowd bounce as one, to create that sense of communion while allowing everyone to get lost in their own mind. So more than a fan encounter, I think my most memorable moment with a crowd was my first set at Berghain in July 2023. I won’t lie, I was super nervous that the people would not connect with my set, especially since I was going after Marrøn, but after one hour I started to really feel the connexion so I relaxed a bit and really took the time to watch the dark silhouettes vibing and bouncing as one, a few fans in the air and the amazing light show in that church-like room. And when I finished and the lights went on, seeing the packed floor cheering and applauding really caught me by surprise. These two images have been engraved in my brain since then.