How has living in so many different places shaped the way you approach music?

The places where I have lived have absolutely shaped my musical identity. For me, music is a very experiential and tangible physical experience - so where I have experienced music in my physical body has especially affected me. I think I've always been interested in underground scenes outside of the famous musical hubs even though I'm from NYC - I feel like it's these underground scenes in the margins that are really exciting, values-led, passionate, and sometimes really precarious at the same time. I really came of age musically in Rio de Janeiro, where I began to collect records and learned how to DJ. I also briefly lived in New Delhi, and being part of a wave of up and coming female and feminist DJs there has really influenced me. And finally, I ended up somehow in Hong Kong, and this is the place where I started my own party and began to do music direction and curation, really thinking about who I'm choosing and what under appreciated sounds we are specifically pushing in Hong Kong. If I were to pull out a few concrete threads, I would say that it's in Rio where my love for 80s and 90s underknown Brazilian records began, then in Berlin and New Delhi where I began to dig more into cosmic and also "world/global" music, and finally, in Hong Kong, I think I became a little bit clubbier and discovered more electronic dance music that I began to love specifically during the pandemic, when I was missing club culture and late night dance floors.

You’ve said online “I think that DJs have this responsibility to uncover music that's not so widely known and to share it. But I think it's at the point where it becomes too serious, it becomes too introspective. The audience isn't connecting with it”. What for you is music that you find people really connect to on the dance floor, does a particularly magical moment stand out?

Not any one dance floor is the same actually - there will always be one dance floor for one moment in time that never exists again. So sometimes it's really just about knowing your crowd, knowing where you are, and somehow hopefully knocking it out of the park. I love the feeling of sometimes playing “anthems” to very dedicated loyal dancers of specific parties, let's say Bad Times Disco (obviously I know my own crowd) or Transport or Fandango, and I think it's amazing that people can connect around underground anthems of specific parties, that's really niche subculture to me and a kind of community vibe that can only be forged through repetition. But the audience doesn't always need to recognise the song to connect to it, I think it's generally just about checking to see if people are vibing and if people connected to music through other ways like maybe laughing, dancing with their friends, busting a silly move, asking for a track ID, or sending you a message about a song later.

In a world where vinyl DJs are becoming less and less common, cost, accessibility, less than desirable equipment in many venues amongst other challenges. What keeps you connected to this art form and any tips for people wanting to explore this medium?

It's actually a huge obstacle to become a vinyl DJ in Hong Kong because people (including myself!) have very small living spaces and so people are literally choosing records over let's say - furniture or clothes storage. And sometimes I'm really sad that records are less accessible for young people. At the same time, I just keep on telling people that it is accessible, actually. It's all about making choices and prioritising music and digging for the discounts, and I 100% believe it's possible to collect records in a very economical way. I encourage people to 1) collect records first without worrying about turntables 2) saving up for turntables when they're really committed and absolutely need them and 3) either always bugging venues to get turntables or to rent them out. It's interesting now because literally no venues sometimes have turntables - you can just offer them to these venues but definitely rent them out! Be compensated for your time and energy.

I recommend people wanting to kind of get started and hooked to follow some channels that archive records on Youtube… there are a lot! There are a lot! I could recommend Daniel Pisano, Telephones' channel, Maybe Tonight, so many channels. Bad Times Disco is also there but we need to become active again in 2025.

What would you say to people who think politics has no place on the dance floor?

I would say that everybody has their own opinions and can keep their own opinions, but I hope that they would respect the people who are trying to encourage people to be less passive and more involved in their communities. It takes a great deal of privilege to conflate ‘politics’ with doing anything for other people, and really when it gets down to it, it is an anti-political and anti-activist position. I'm not sure why these people have the convictions that they do, but I would say that it's just the same as mine which just so happens to be the opposite. If you don't want to get involved in anything for the wider community, then fine, but don't get in the way of people who are building a better collective society for all. Dance floors are a part of doing that, just as anything else would be.

What would you like to see more collectives doing in the future to help better our communities, the wider scene and people in general?

Would love to see more collectives getting involved in community organising! I think that parties are doing great fundraisers right now which is amazing to see. Always love to support a fundraiser party and these two naturally go together so well. But collectives and parties can also organize "non music" activities, like organising their ‘dancers/ticketholders’ to join a protest, or create protest art, or save tenants from eviction, or join a labor campaign. When you think about the fact that we are promoters and we are mobilising hundreds, sometimes thousands of people to come together - I don't think there's any reason why we can't also use that power and responsibility to organize people to get involved in their communities and find causes to care about. Why not? Afterwards they can come to the club.