After getting involuntarily hooked on jungle and Bristol trip-hop, courtesy of her sister blasting bangers through the walls of her childhood home, it’s no wonder Mixtress is the artist she is today.
Amsterdam raised, India born Mixtress is completely obsessed with everything from jungle to hardcore to footwork, and everything in-between. She joins a wave of rising artists who are quite simply having the best time flexing their 360 love for music. Genre limitations? Nah, not today, mate.
There is something refreshing about her, and with conforming off the agenda, you only need to check out her Rinse FM show or her Boiler Room set as evidence of her relentless, good vibes energy.
Following her collaboration with Pete Cannon on their rave heavy ‘Blinded by the Lights 23’ refix, it was the perfect time to get to know Mixtress that little bit better.
Mixtress! How’s your day been? Talk me through a bog standard day for you.
My bog standard day is pretty unglamorous actually! I work a day job in IT so my day always starts off with a lot of coffee. I use my lunch breaks to work on some music or do some DJ admin. The moment I finish I usually have plans, a studio session, coming home and making tunes or socialising. I have to fit my social calendar in between Monday and Thursday because I’m DJing on the weekends.
I like hearing about people’s day jobs! I think artists not having other jobs is a big misconception in music, especially when starting out.
Everyone’s got one! I like having one. Helps me switch off from music for a few hours too. It’s not the most riveting job in the world but I love my team. They care about my music but they don’t really care what country I’m in on the weekend. They’re like ‘cool’. It’s perfect too because so long as I’m doing my job, I can be hungover in Berlin and be like ‘Hey guys!’ and it’ll be all good. It’s really nice.
I think it’s always quite humbling having people around you that don’t work in the music industry, or are even like the music that you play! They’re happy for you, but they like you, not your music.
Exactly that. It’s the same with a lot of my good friends and my partner, as much as they support me – and they really do support me – they also don’t really care if I’m DJing somewhere. I’ll say ‘I’m closing the last Printworks party’, and they’ll say ‘Ok, ok, that sounds like a big deal, I’ll come to that’. The standards get higher every year and they sort of don’t care! It keeps me humbled. I have to remind myself it’s not that glamorous, it’s my job at the end of the day. I love it, but it’s just that, a job.
I want to take it back a little bit, to younger Mixtress days. Talk to me about how your family influenced your journey into music.
I grew up with music all around me. My pops in particular was really influential. I was really lucky. He was really into music, not necessarily dance music but jazz. I also grew up around a lot of Bristol trip hop too because my sister – who is 10 years older than me – she listened to absolute bangers when she was younger! As I was growing up, I didn’t really have an option other than to absorb amazing music. I was like 6 listening to The Prodigy, breakbeat and just really good British electronic dance music. I was pretty engrossed from a young age. It became the norm for me. Then, when I became a teenager, it was a natural progression for me to get deeper into music, go to gigs, explore what I really like.
I love that you’re like ‘I had no choice!’
I didn’t! My sister was so menacing. Imagine, I’m 8, she’s 18 and it’s just like ‘Smack My B*itch Up’ blasting through the house! My partners were out a lot so she was my babysitter. I thought, ‘oh this is what music is’. Obviously, nowadays, I think pop music is great too but I was never exposed to it when I was a kid. When I first started to hear more mainstream music, I was confused about why The Prodigy wasn’t in the charts all the time!
Brilliant. You had some interesting moves geographically as a child too. How would you say being born in India and raised in Amsterdam has influenced who you are as an artist today?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, actually. When I was a kid, my dad liked listening to a lot of instrumental, Indian, classical music. Because we’re not Punjabi, I was born in New Deli and my parents are Bengali, it was more of the jazzy, fusion, world music kind of sounds. The stuff on NTS at 9am. That was the stuff my dad would play a lot so it was very sentimental for me and has influenced my taste massively. These are the sounds I listen to in the morning. I don’t listen to any dance music before 1pm. I refuse to do it. If I listen to a load of jungle 8 hours a day, I’ll go nuts. I want it to be special.
Amsterdam has influenced me in the way that everything was so accessible. It was so cheap. Not just dance music either. I remember seeing Kendrick Lemar for €15. It was outrageous. I’d see everyone I wanted to see because I could afford to and the city is tiny. That, alongside the drum & bass scene in Amsterdam – the proper old school d&b, not jump up – was amazing. Super inspiring for me. We had a lot of Rupture style, serious jungle nights.
Serious jungle nights sound like the one. So, let’s talk ‘Blinded by the Lights 23’! How did the collaboration with Pete Cannon come about?
Before we did our first studio session, Pete and I were pals, and before that, I was a huge fan of his. His knowledge of jungle and drum & bass is enciclopedic. But he’s also one of those people that doesn’t take themselves too seriously, and I really like that about him. He’d hate it if I said this but he’s one of the older heads that is just generally quite enthusiastic about the younger generation of jungle. He’s not gatekeeping, he’s just very supportive and not in a virtue signaling way.
We met after he booked me for a couple of gigs, plus I used to buy stuff on his label N4 records. He found me on this live stream I did in lockdown where I played a lot of breakbeat and hardcore from 94/95. I already knew about him though of course, particularly from his music production tutorials. A week before I did Boiler Room, I was having a recurring dream about ‘Blinded By The Lights’, but I was playing it in Fabric and it was a lot faster. I have a massive ADD brain so sometimes I just think about music being sped up in my head. I thought ‘I should make this tune for the Boiler Room set’. So, the week before I hit up Pete Cannon, he said yes and we bought two sausage rolls and two oat lattes and got cracking.
Sounds like the perfect studio session. It’s always lovely to hear when established people in the scene help new artists too.
Yeah! And share their knowledge too. I started using Ableton about 4-5 years ago now, but it’s been a journey. I like when other producers are more open about sharing knowledge to help you. Like if I asked Pete ‘How do you do this?’ – or any of my pals for that matter – they’ll explain it to me. It’s just the nice thing to do. Working with other producers has also given me more confidence. I had imposter syndrome for ages and now I’m like, actually, my tunes don’t suck.
Was it ‘Blinded by The Lights 23’ in particular that gave you that confidence?
You know what, I’ve been playing a lot of my tunes in my sets for a while but I label them as ID, and I always get good feedback on them. People will ask me what a track is, and it’ll be me, but before this, I never had the guts to release anything. Now, I don’t feel so scared to make stuff. I think putting out your first release is the scariest thing to do. Also, it’s a bit crazy for your first release to be a refix of such an iconic track. It’s really exciting, but really scary
It’s a pretty big move as a first release! Did Mike Skinner himself give you the thumbs up?
We made the track, the original version was pretty rough. There were so many happy hardcore, jazz-synth breakdowns in it, it was extremely hardcore. We were just chucking stuff in. It was getting great reaction at gigs, and then RCA (SONY) reached out, and said ‘Hey this is pretty cool’, we got chatting, she said to keep us in the loop. She then took the track to Mike Skinner and said ‘This is getting traction, what do you think?’ and apparently, he says no to every remix of Original Pirate Material, which is fair enough, because it’s a masterpiece. But apparently he was like ‘Yeah this is cool’, which we were not expecting. Then things got rolling after that. There was probably six months of back and forth until it was released. There’s also some other stuff that is coming up in regards to that tune too, so that’s cool.
Nothing you can share, obviously…
No, unfortunately not, but it’ll be a fun little surprise when it comes out.
Last but not least, Mixtress… you’ve been in the music industry for a few years now, what things have you seen or been privy to that you’re already keen to change?
I did my first set in 2015 and in that time, a lot has changed in terms of the scene and the music industry. The attitude towards diversity and inclusivity has definitely changed, but there is still so much work to do. When I first started playing, I was the only girl on the line up. That was standard, and I got paid the least. Other than that, I’m keen to see people on the internet’s attitude towards women change. As much as there is diversity now, the amount of sexism you get for doing Boiler Room or HÖR BERLIN is crazy, even though there are moderators, the amount of sh*t that women get is completely unfair. That and another thing would be phones in clubs. I really see the difference when I play in a stickered club, where you have to cover your phone, as opposed to when you play in a normal club when everyone is filming the whole time, making Tik Tok’s. When you play in Europe, it’s very much taboo to get your phone out in the club, I’d love to implement that attitude here in the UK.
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