ELECTRIC INDIGO (Austria) “To call Electric Indigo the most important woman in the Austrian electronic scene would be an insult,” wrote Sven Gaechter, editor-in-chief of Profil magazine; in fact this is true from several aspects – the female, electronic as well as international. Susanne Kirchmayer – a DJ and producer who has been renowned for nearly two decades – has her roots in the Viennese jazz and funk sets of the late ‘80s, but she was soon overwhelmed by the power of Detroit and Chicago techno obscurity, ritualism and machinery; to put it in her own words: “the DJ-update of the man-machine music idea” – human funkiness and the mechanics of the machine.
One of the significant turning points in Susanne Kirchmayr’s career is related to the legendary Berlin record store Hard Wax, where between 1993 and 1996 she was responsible for purchasing and communication. The late ‘90s saw the establishment of indigo:inc, a server for extended party experiences and multimedia events; this simultaneously led to the female:pressure project, a significant contribution to the establishment of women as DJs and producers. Female:pressure is an international database and central on-line info point of female artists, most of whom are related to the electronic music scene. The db can be searched by geographic location, music styles, as well as other parameters, including promotional information.
On the threshold of the millennium, Electric Indigo became involved in two television projects on TIV, an alternative cable network in Vienna. Indigo Encounters featured international guests from the music industry who, in a relaxed atmosphere and lying on plastic grass, played their favourite songs, whereas the ambitious TIVIT was a weekly one hour information programme about IT, software development, technical innovations, open source, as well as privacy and related civil rights issues.
Indigo:inc reincarnated as a true record label, and Electric Indigo releases a double-mix-CD together with Acid Maria, the top German DJane among her male counterparts Steve Bug and the International Deejay Gigolos. The CD, which seems to imply an eventual series of female:pressure mixes or some collaborative projects, is actually only the beginning of Susanne Kirchmayr’s activities in the 21st century. Within the famous ZKM and its Phonorama exhibition, Kirchmayr and friends from all over the world perform European Voices, an electro-deconstruction that cuts and reinterprets world anthems in the context of the voice as a decisive moment in ‘becoming active and heard’. The collaboration with the ‘anarchic’ violinist Mia Zabelka led to the avant-garde Colophony Circuit which often plays live with other female artists, such as Dorit Chrysler, best known for her theremin style, and the singer Barca Baxant.
Distinguished by new wave electricism, together with a sense of dynamics and heterogeneity, all of these extended musical influences can be heard in Kirchmayr’s DJ performances. This said, however, there is also a touch of tribalism mingled with the emotion and ritual which is in a strange way initiated by an era of machines and information, catastrophe and global capitalism – self-realisation in the urban, and her protesting in the global.
Nina Spavatsky
Trick-C is one of the few longstanding DJanes in Slovenia. Succumbing to the sound of electronic music in 1992, and on the back of five years of spinning for friends at private techno parties, she realised this was what she wanted to do for a living. Her first DJ set at the The Day After party in Graz (Austria) raised a fervent audience to its feet. This was followed by several public appearances in Slovenia and in Austria, culminating in her first major DJ set in Celje in 1998, where at the Alien Night mass rave she span in front of an audience of over a thousand.
Following her Celje triumph, she disappeared from the scene for a whole year. Driven by the desire for a dynamic life and new experience, Trick-C left provincial Maribor and moved to the country’s capital, Ljubljana, where she was in search of new ideas. In the style of a true partysan, she met DJ Point – her partner-to-be both in personally and professionally – at a party in the legendary U-Bahn club in Kranj. With his help, Trick-C extended her comeback into Croatia where at that time the underground techno scene was booming. Today Trick-C and DJ Point work together under the name Caan Production. It is their objective to connect promoters and organisers, institute DJ exchanges (and in particular DJane-exchanges), as well organise and co-organise parties.
In her career Trick-C has performed with a number of DJs, including Mary, Umek, Kanzyani, Kiki, Joel Muel, Marcus Storck, Virgin Helena, Innigo Kennedy, Gayle Sun, Damon Wild and Carlijn. Trick-C maintains that she slowly and persistently goes her own way learning from both praise as well as criticism. Her music repertoire includes progressive, tech-house, tribal and driving techno. Through the music – in which she searches for something intimate and deeper – Trick-C delivers the audience emotions in time and space, with no limits, and allows every person to interpret them in any way they want. But the most important thing to her is that her music makes people feel good and relaxed.
Helena M.
Miss House Wife should not be judged by her age; she is already well established and one of Slovenia’s finest DJanes with a long track record of public displays of her amazing capabilities behind the decks and the production of equally inspiring music. Her mission is the promotion of a healthy electronic culture and the self-expression of various styles, namely: a subtle fusion of house styles, which encompasses new school, electropop, pumpin’-french house, micro house and disco house.
Miss House Wife started to spin across Slovenia in 1998, from small clubs with a more intimate atmosphere to bigger venues: from Africa, SubSub, Cream Club, Bellevue, Teater, Casablanca, Heaven, Ghetto, Romantica, Amsterdam, Generacija X, Impulz, MC Pekarna, Lipa, and the finest Slovene club - Ambasada Gavioli, to the more underground scene and the K4 club where she was resident in 2002. She also played in Switzerland in the summer of 2004 (Les Amis, Samurai, Folie et Plaisir).
Miss House Wife spins solely for the love of the Music, the love of Esthetics and pure Fun, always bringing people together on the dancefloor and connecting them into One Body and the Vibe. Future plans of this amazing lady – who also holds a degree in social work – include, among other things, a DJ career on the bigger stage as well as to work as a producer.
Dragica Sušnik
