The multi-talented Nina Kraviz has been at the forefront of the global techno scene for almost a decade. She has been considered the most popular female DJ for a long time, even back when women were rarely included in festival announcement videos. Now, she headlines almost every festival she performs at. In addition to being a beloved performer, she runs a highly successful label, focused on promoting experimental music from established figures on the scene but also launching new stars of the genre.
She aperforms at Coachella, Primavera, and festivals such as Ultra and Sonar, but she’s also coming to our own Best European Festival, for which she must have prepared a few remixes of her singing singles, made by colleagues such as the famous Solomun, Dubyshkin or Hi-Lo. She will almost certainly play “Lollytrance“, signed by Antigone, which is considered by many to be the techno-trance track of the year.
The Siberian dentist has now become perhaps the most recognisable face in techno music. Her techno is sharp yet open-minded. There’s that famous set in Melbourne at the start of her international career when she changed tempos and styles, confusing the crowd so much that some people asked for refunds. She took to social media with a long post, not justifying herself but explaining that her definition of techno is obviously a bit wider than the audience’s at the time. She kept building her style, and soon, the audience accepted and embraced it.
She was born in the Siberian part of Russia almost forty years ago. She became interested in music by listening to Europa Plus radio. The station broadcast obscure electronic music in an unpopular time slot, featuring artists such as Armando and Steve Poindexter. She studied dentistry in Moscow and later got a job there, and in addition to fixing teeth, she started working at a local radio station and performing on weekends in clubs such as Propaganda.
She got the chance to study music production in Seattle but was not granted an American visa. She managed to enrol into an academy in Melbourne, but mostly managed on her own, releasing an album for Rekids in early 2014. She soon started her label called трип before selecting her tracks for the prestigious DJ-Kicks compilation, which distinguished her as someone with excellent taste in music.
There’s also the sub-label GALAXIID, which is another proof of Ninochka’s open-mindedness and breadth of interests, including the 70s Russian avant-garde and Japanese ambient music.
You can also see her in the most hyped-up video game in recent history. Aside from composing some of the music for “Cyberpunk 2077″, she even has a small role. All of this shows how far Kraviz has broken into the mainstream. We would not be surprised to see a question about her pop up in Trivial Pursuit!
Multi-talented, extremely productive, ambitious, and persistent, Nina leads the wave of (female) DJs with intense techno for the masses and shapes and defines today’s scene. Her special relationship with audiences in this region always gives her room for new experiments, adding a new dimension to her performances at EXIT and Sea Dance. She returns to the Sea Dance Festival in precisely one month, on August 26th.
Written by: Vojkan Bećir
