The Mix 007: Beatrice M.

I’d love to hear more about how you approach your sets as I’ve heard your preparation is very in depth.

I never go to a set with a bunch of stuff on my USB thinking “let’s see what happens”, I always prepare. I don’t really look at crowds and try to read or adapt to them. I know that’s not what a DJ is supposed to do, but my sets always have an idea and I trust it.

This may sound corny but what excites me most about DJing is building stories. I like to roll up my sleeves and concentrate on finding the glue between deep, syncopated techno and dubstep. There’s these tracks, like Azu Tiwaline and Tammo Hesselink’s recent releases, that are just perfect for bridging the gap between bass and techno.

Sometimes you’ll hear sets where DJs play hipster bass music, club tools and then an OG dubstep track will come up and it feels like you’ve gone from one sound to another. I’ve been on dancefloors where that happens and it doesn’t work for me. I love both tracks, but the way they’ve been connected just loses me because there was no intermediate.

I’m also guilty of this myself when DJing as sometimes I’ll try going from deep, syncopated techno into dubstep that references techno and I’ll be like “that was a bad choice.” Like, it didn’t work, but bringing all these different sounds together is a skill that you develop over time and I’m really excited because I’ve still got so much to learn. I’m happy that I’m not satisfied, I want to keep trying and trying.

Having three decks is also really important. If I play a 2-step track, I can layer it so I’ll just have the snare, but with the texture and the sound design of minimal techno track made by someone like Mike Parker, and then another thing so it all sounds fluid. If you just left the 2-step track on its own, it wouldn’t be solid enough in the context of my set.

I have a tendency to only leave tracks to play for a minute-and-a-half, which isn’t actually very compatible with psychedelic things, but when I’m playing vinyl it’s a whole different approach. I have to leave the tracks longer because I don’t have a big enough vinyl, but also when you’re pulling out records from a sleeve the crowd becomes a lot more indulgent of longer, selector vibes than quicker transitions, which I like too. Also, I’ll play different stuff on vinyl as I don’t have a whole catalogue of digis to choose from. Basically, what I’m saying is that I might play some garage and you’re going to have to suck it up.

It’s almost a year since you started your label, what was the reason behind its inception?

There’s lots of people in France who get it, but I don’t really know any non-dudes really pushing 140. I mean proper dubstep heads, there are a lot of girls who play some 140 in their sets. It can be a bit lonely, I love the sound but I don’t really find myself in terms of representation or diversity.

The idea to start BAIT came about because of that but also because I had an itch that I needed to scratch. I’ve always liked bass, but I’m not really into bangers. I like the subtle and minimal side of that stuff. I also love the hypnotising side of deep techno.

I thought to myself that there really must be a line between the two, and that’s what we’re going to push with the label.

There’s a lot of people that are hungry for this at the moment, it’s kind of in vogue. But of course, I’m not doing things because they’re fashionable. Why does anything become fashionable? People want it for some reason. That’s why the label’s called BAIT, because it’ll lure people in who are hungry for something.

I also know it can be pejorative to say something is bait, some English friends taught me that after I’d named the label, they were like “do you know what it means when you say something is bait?”

It’s such a massive word in UK vocabulary now. I grew up in South London and I’d hear it every day at school.

Really?

Yeah, if something’s bait then it’s either obvious, conspicuous or both.

Could you give an example of a sentence in which you use it?

If someone played a tune that everyone’s been rinsing in the club, you’d be like “that’s a bit bait.”

That’s hilarious.

Do you run the label on your own?

I run it on my own because, if I’m being honest, I’m very impulsive and very stubborn. It just works better if I’m making all the decisions and I don’t have to consult anyone.

There’s so many artists in my surroundings that I want to work with, everything that happens with the label comes about really naturally and now I’ve got releases lined up for the next year and a half.

People just send stuff and I’ve got this friend in Paris who does all the mastering for me. We’ve got a clear idea of how we want BAIT to sound.

Often before a gig. I’ll be like “hey, I’ve got some new BAIT stuff, can you please master it really quickly, like in two days, because I want to play it out. I don’t even know when they are going to be released yet, but I want to start playing them already to get them born into the clubs so that they exist on dance floors.

That’s the objective of the label, it’s to make a certain sound exist in clubs.

Aside from how it sounds, you can always tell when a track is off a BAIT record from its unique graphic identity.

All the artwork and gig posters are handmade. These days, everyone is making posters or visuals that are very synthetic and computer made, you could say it’s bait. I’m just using a pen and paper, which is the opposite. I also do collages, all the recent visuals and the ones coming come from a magazine selling musical equipment and instruments. I just cut out everything I liked, stuck them together and scanned them. It’s really simple. I just thought I’d do them myself to save money.