Rida. Then there’s another type of meteoric rise, which, if you scratch away at it, turns out not to be meteoric at all. This kind of rise is the culmination of years of hard graft, passion and ambition, followed by the magical catalyst of a lucky break. You want an example? Look no further than
B.Traits.
I
FEVER DREAM Some of you know
B.Traits already. Last year the Canadian-born, London-based DJ broke into the Top 40 with ‘Fever’, a rush of piano euphoria that thrust a hyperactive ’90s rave aesthetic headlong into booming modernity. The night owls amongst you may have heard her on her 2am – 4am In New DJs We Trust Radio 1 and 1Xtra slot, where she races through “30 to 40 tracks in two hours”, demolishing dubstep, broken beats, house, garage, classic rave and drum & bass with a rare verve and pleasure. Or you may have caught one of her high energy DJ sets as the original Digital Soundgirl, the fi rst female signed to Shy FX’s iconic crew. But for those of you who still don’t know her, we can guarantee you will do very soon. Her profi le is about to explode. Why? Because Annie Mac is taking maternity leave to have a kid with Toddla T, and
B.Traits has been promoted to take over her two weekend shows throughout the summer, effectively becoming the new face of dance and bass on Radio 1. And she’s taking it in her stride just fi ne… “Everyone keeps telling me that things are going to get crazy,”
B.Traits says. “Mista Jam was talking to me the other day, and he was like, ‘Yeah, you have no idea do you?’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I imagine it’ll do good things for my profi le, but I’m just rolling with it at this point! I don’t know what to expect — I’m waiting for this backlash of angry Annie Mac fans, I’m very wary of it, like, OK I know it’s coming very soon! But I’m just trying to approach it the way I would play a set to a festival crowd, just be really passionate and bring the carnival.”
We’re talking in the Digital Soundboy studio, the label’s creative heart situated in an industrial estate sprawling on the edges of North London. B. Traits — aka Brianna Price — sits in front of the imposing mixing console, friendly, effusive, and beyond excited about her new role, laughing as we talk. “I listen to Annie’s show all the time, I fi nd a lot of tracks for my show from it. I mean, I thought I might be considered for the Sunday show, but when they offered me the Friday night and the Sunday night I was like, ‘HOLY SHIT!’ I was totally freaking out when they called me, it’s so exciting, but kinda scary… I feel honoured. The fact that I’m an outsider, and I’m bringing my sound to this country is fucking awesome. And people seem to like my accent! “This whole speaking thing with music is still very, very new to me,”
n the music industry there are two types of meteoric rise. One is a scary, Susan Boyle-shaped process, where the basking lizard kings of pop pluck an unknown, polish them dumb, tell them what their new name, hairstyle and personality is, and thrust them mercilessly into the light, there to cavort for our pleasure. These poor sods have got no past and little future. One moment you’ve never heard of them and the next they’re eating rat’s bollocks on I’m A Celebrity and releasing singles with Flo
she continues. “I mean, on my shows on Rinse I never had to talk, and on Radio 1 they kinda threw me to the dogs right away, my second show I did live, and I was like, ‘Aaarrrgghh!’ But that’s how you learn, right? I mean I’d never done a two-hour live show before the Annie Mac one. Listening back, my voice was really high cos I got so nervous, but I’m getting better. It used to take me fucking ages — I was doing it all in Ableton beforehand, like a two-hour mixtape every week! Crazy! It’d take me hours and hours. And I’d be writing when I was meant to speak, and I was adamant about saying what every single track was, and there was way less interaction. Now I’m trying to enjoy it more, feel the music more.”
CANADA TO THE UK The presenting may be new to B, but the DJing isn’t. Despite her seemingly sudden rise, she’s “been around for a really, really long time”, and the story of her immersion into UK bass culture verges on the surreal. Born and raised in a remote Canadian mountain town called Nelson, where everyone smoked weed and was either “a hick or a hippy”, Price started tuning into late night TV broadcasts looking to hear something — anything — different to Canada’s pop playlist radio stations. On a show playing ‘world’ music, she fell in love with the ’90s breakbeat science of The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim. Soon she was buying imports of Ministry of Sound compilations, and against all odds, falling in love with the warping basslines, gunshots and clattering beats of speed garage. “I had a friend who was a jungle DJ and I was dancing at the time as a b-girl, and my friend was like, ‘I really wanna dance’, and we swapped, I’d give him basic dance lessons and he’d show me how to beat match, and eventually I started DJing at all the school parties, playing speed garage, drum & bass and hip-hop. There’s totally a generation of kids from Nelson that are 187 Lockdown fans! That was a monumental time in my life when I was listening to that music… everyone was! And that’s how I got into jungle, hearing remixes like Natural Born Chillers [‘Rock the Funky Beat’].”
“If someone pushes a track on me that I hate then I’m just not gonna play it. I’m only going to get anywhere in this industry by being true to myself, I’m not gonna get pushed into liking a fad.”
B.TRAITS
Moving on from the incongruous, if kinda charming, image of stoner kids raving to ‘Gunman’ against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains (and this is long before YouTube rendered the world a click away), B. tells DJ Mag how she fi nished high school and moved on to Vancouver as a 17-year-old. There she joined up with the promoters of Automatic, Canada’s biggest drum & bass night, and started DJing while still too young to be in the club — although she recalls paying her dues. “I remember playing so early, I don’t think the doors were even open!” she laughs. Soon enough she was moving up the bill and promoting her own d&b events in nearby ski resort Whistler, booking international stars such as Fresh and Chase & Status. It was here that she met original don DJ SS, who was impressed. “I opened the night, and he was like, ‘I have this gig coming up in Estonia and it’s meant to be an all-girl drum & bass line-up, it’d be great to get you on it’. I’d never travelled before, I’d had no passport before, and the furthest I’d gone was Toronto, so being able to travel doing something I loved was awesome! So I went to Estonia, and SS got me a few other gigs, I played in Herbal in London as well — Vadim was playing before me and Mixologists were there as well, and I was just, ‘I’m fucking playing Herbal now!’, I was tripping! When I got back home SS told me I did a really great job, and offered to take me on tour on some North American dates.”
www.djmag.ca 039
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