Violet Mix
Bringing in Tapes #86 is Violet. In her home city Lisbon, Violet is contributing to her local scene from different angles. She’s co-founder of online radio station Rádio Quântica and also resident at mina – a queer rave in unexpected venues. This work permeates Violet’s work as an artist, as she thoughtfully expresses the political history of dance music through her voice and her music.
As a producer, she has released music on One Eyed Jacks and Love On The Rocks, self-released collaborations with artists likes Elles, DEBONAIR and Nightwave for International Women’s Day, remixed on Cómeme and established her own label – Naive. The first self-released EP on it, “Togetherness” resonated widely, using the sound of familiar breaks and twisting them into new contexts with dub-inspired bass, brass flourishes and dreamy chords. Eris Drew played the title track on her widely appraised RA podcast as well as choosing it as the featured track in a short film about her DJing.
Violet incorporates similar sounds from her production process into her DJing, melding breaks, extraterrestrial jacking rhythms, imaginative techno, acid house and more in a way that feels natural and challenging all at once. She has contributed mixes for Beats In Space, Crack, The Ransom Note, Mixmag and Cómeme as well as having radio appearances on Rinse, NTS and The Lot. Violet has played across Europe at parties such as Room 4 Resistance, Berlin Atonal and Field Maneuvers and embarked on her first US tour in 2018.
Hey Ines - how are you? Why don’t you start by introducing yourself for those who don’t know?
Hiiii! Ok so my name is Ines, I’m from Lisbon (where I live too) and make music and DJ under the artist name Violet. I run three labels: naive, naivety and ANGEL (first release on this latter one coming this year). I helped start a few community projects here in Lisbon, namely a community radio station called Radio Quantica, queer rave mina and a DIY cultural venue called Planeta Manas in the outskirts of the city.
Talk us through the process behind this mix - what’s the ideal setting to listen to it?
It’s pretty ravey. One of my best friends Phoebe is releasing an amazing EP soon and I wanted to play a couple of tracks off it and construct the rest of the mix around that, as well as include some jungle and jazz vibes to reflect my obsession with both worlds… I would say the ideal setting - a nice fast-paced walk (or run) with headphones or a house party!
Favourite track inside?
Oooooof… tough call. That’s an unfair ask!!! But I’ll say the opener cause it’s made by someone I love and it slaps really really hard - it’s vibey, original and banging.
Talk to us more about Naive and how the label started - how would you describe your sound? Do you feel like it's evolved through the years?
It started out as a necessity, I wanted to put out tracks I had sent as demos and labels weren’t up for them. Then it evolved into a family affair. There are no real sonic limits to the label (or me as a DJ), so you can find acid, jungle, ukg, electro, techno… as long as there’s a lot of feeling and, I must confess, a tendency for weird, alien, moody and/or blissful sound design…
You’ve done a lot for the music scene out in Lisbon; from co-founding Radio Quântica, running a queer party, Mina as well as Naive - tell us about the importance of these kinds of platforms focussed on POC and LGBTQ communities?
I would say marginalised communities in general come up with the most groundbreaking stuff - suffering makes for inspiration for art after all, isn’t it? - but are often the least protected institutionally. So all these projects are involved with trying to make up for those failings.
How would you compare it to the industry in London - are there any platforms or collectives you think are contributing to diversifying the scene?
In Lisbon, there are loads of amazing projects trying to also work on representation and actual material change in the scene. From event producers like Filho Unico, Out.Ra, parties like Arvi, Dengo, Carniçeira… the list goes on honestly! There is no shortage of hyper-talented hard-working people trying to make Lisbon a fairer city.
We’re going through a rapid and very painful transformation in the city where so-called digital nomads, richer than the average Portuguese person, and literal millionaires who don’t work as well, are buying and renting loads in the center, driving up the prices cause the greed of landlords is immeasurable and our institutions don’t seem to be brave enough to put on rent caps or even forbid these people to invest in the city for speculatory reasons or even rent a house that means evicting a local. The local authorities are doing quite the opposite, coming up with tax break schemes for digital nomads (funny how northern Europeans and rich people, in general, are not only welcome but stimulated to come over but the great EU fortress has such tight refugee policies…) and other detrimental policies like golden visas - which means anyone can get a PT visa if they buy an expensive enough house here…. Essentially policy wise everything that’s being done is basically the opposite of what would help locals who depend on local wages and face these unaffordable housing options. As you can imagine, that has a negative impact on the artistic community, which is more and more precarious and having to truly invent new ways to resist, but at what cost?
What’s next for Naive?
I’m putting out my own EP in mid-February, it will be the first digi only EP on the label while I switch distros. Next up hopefully is an amazing artist based in berlin called urbn mowgli - again, a relatively unknown artist, which is something that I find important to do in the label: pick up emerging artists and help give them a push.
3 artists that helped shape your sound?
Special Request, Jamal Moss and Cosey Fanni Tutti would be three very good examples I think.