|
How much do you really know about Nina Kraviz? She's a Russian techno DJ, an accomplished producer, one of dance music's breakthrough names of the last five years. True enough, but there's so much more to her story than that. She's one of electronic music's most interesting characters, someone who has stuck to her musical guns since day one, someone who has wide-ranging roots that run deep in the past, yet she's also the embodiment of the future. Her signature sound is a raw blend of house and techno with a very acidic feel. If that feels very now, Kraviz has a lot to do with it. Kraviz was born and raised in the Siberian city Irkutsk in Russia. Her dad is a passionate music collector and she grew up listening to jazz and psychedelic rock. In the late '90s she heard acid classic "Downfall' by Armando on the radio. It inspired her to set up her own radio show on a local station, focussing on techno, house and IDM. However, Irkutsk is about as far away from dance music's centre of gravity as it's possible to get, so even though she wanted to dedicate her whole life to music, studying to be a dentist in Moscow seemed like a more sensible plan. In Moscow, she spent her spare time working as a reporter for Russian music magazine Ptuch. "That opened my mind to an even wider range of music," she says. "I started building up my own record collection that captured many of my music phases, from techno, house and space disco to rare funk and '60s and '70s soundtrack music that I started mixing in small clubs and bars. I also found myself a job at an event agency, throwing parties with Underground Resistance, and it was through this that I met people like Juan Atkins, something I could have only dreamed about when I was in Siberia
|
