Nadia Ksaiba - Fèmmme Fraîche Guest Mix 001 & Headline DJ FF#15

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NADIA KSAIBA

Guest Mix 001

So here at Fèmmme Fraîche we decided to start a guest mix series, to celebrate and highlight some of the amazing female DJ's we're booking, digging, following, dancing and loosing our shit to on a regular basis. It made perfect sense to kick-start our mix series with the incredible Nadia Ksaiba, who will be headlining our forthcoming party on March 10th - an international women's day special no less. We had a quick chat to Nadia to get the lowdown on her musical journey and what we can expect to hear from her on the 10th. 

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NADIA KSAIBA INTERVIEW

Hi Nadia, Thanks for having a little chat with us and for the awesome mix. We're super excited to have you as our headliner for our Fèmmme Fraîche International Women's day spesh, so what can we expect to hear from you in the lazerpit on the 10th March?

I love the Dalston Superstore Basement, it's one of my favourite places to play and dance in London, everything is the perfect balance, the smoke, the lights, the dark... although sometimes I wish it was double the size. Anything goes in this room so it will be an equal mix of heads down and hands in the air.

Amazing, were super excited. So you're quite the lady about town and we're particularly in love with your Rhythm Connection show on NTS with (Mr Dalston Superstore himself) Dan Beaumont, Bangers and bants - the perfect combo. So how did the show come about? How long has it been running and how do you carefully select your the blinding bangers for the show?

Dan (Beaumont) just decided that he wanted us to do a radio show together, I'd never actually heard of NTS until I stared researching places in Hackney we could do it. We joined them about a year and a half after they first launched and then the station really blew up. I think we've been doing our show for about 5 years now, or coming up to it.

I try to keep the music for the show quite current. When we started I felt like I'd already done a lot of disco shows, or disco and retro nights and wanted to focus on all the good current dance music out there, we do mix it up though... I guess the sound is more timeless than of a time.

And for the folks at home who'd like to listen in, when can they hear the show?

We're live every month on Thursday from 4-6pm. You can find every show archived on our Mix Cloud Page: www.mixcloud.com/rhythmconnection which goes further back than our NTS show page www.nts.live/shows/rhythmconnection or check out the website www.rhythmconnection.co.uk

So I did a little musical digging, and seems we have a common musical connection, we've both had releases on Andy Blake's short-lived but seminal label 'Dissident' - mine was with my electronica outfit The Off Key Hat and your's it seems was alongside Matt Waites under the guise of G&S. You've had a smattering of hits under G&S, are you guys still producing and working together?

G&S is a dinner party, electronic jam session from me and Matt Waites, who is now producing some amazing stuff as Dark Circles. We also worked together on Virtual Lover too. We talked about doing some more stuff together so who knows?

So speaking of 'Virtual Lover' this was released under Nadia Ksaiba as a solo release in 2013, any plans for some more solo tunes?

Well I've been writing with a few other artists, so for now I'm just casually hiding in the background, there should be some stuff out this year

So let's bring attention to the magical mix you've given us, firstly what equipment was this recorded with? and talk us through the musical journey a little

I wanted to downsize all my music gear, so I sold everything and bought it all again in smaller versions, smaller mixer, speakers, Synths etc but this was actually recorded on a pair of the amazing tiny pioneer xdj700's which I borrowed from my DJ pal Rory Phillips (so thanks Rory!). I've got technics at home but these just seemed more fun. The mix was recorded live, the first recording didn't save so this is actually take 2. I haven't made a DJ mix at home for a while so just made a folder of current fave club tracks and tried to play how I would play out [See below for tracklisting]

Aside from the tracks on the mix, name your five fave fraiche tunes at the moment?

Every radio show dan will come in with something amazing either by Spencer Parker or from his label Work Them Records. There was some amazing DJ deep thing, And some new EP from Spencer which I can't stop playing, Both sides.

Amazing, big fan of Spencer Parker, so will go check those out. So finally as it's international Women's day coming up, shout-outs to the women in your world who inspire you the most?

I'm glad to see more female artists in my Rekordbox these days and lots more ladies behind the booth, but the ones that deserve special shout-outs are the long time DJs that have been going at it for a while without getting the recognition they deserve, because they're not new or because no one noticed them because they were a woman - so ladies like Cosmo, DJ Heidi Lawden, Ce Ce Disco, Yourself (Michelle Manetti) etc getting on and doing their own thing. I guess something that The Black Madonna and Honey Dijon proved recently, just keep going, and don't let anything get in your way!

Incredible. Well thanks for the chat and now time to press play on the fab mix below, also follow Nadia on the social links below

 

GUEST MIX 001 - NADIA KSAIBA

Guest Mix, Headline DJMichelle ManettiNadia Ksaiba, Headline DJ, Guest Mix