For the first time in our mix series’ history, we’re hosting a takeover! We’re very excited to share that first up are Edinburgh femme-collective, EPiKA who will be showcasing their talented roster of residents over the next 5 weeks. We got the chance to catchup with founder ona:v (Vera) about the inspiration behind her collective, ongoing challenges, nightlife in Edinburgh, and even a deep-dive on her favourite remixes. Enjoy!
Hi Vera, thanks for taking over our series, we can’t wait to see what you have in store. Can you give a little bit of background to EPiKA and the inspiration behind it?
EPiKA was born, probably like many collectives and night series, from the realisation that if I don’t book myself and people like me, then probably no one will. But also from love for club culture. I was raised on a particular type of music and a specific vibe, and I felt it was missing in Edinburgh.
Let’s take things back a few steps, what are some of your earliest memories of music and how did you get into DJing?
I actually discovered electronic music accidentally and quite late, by – I am not making it up – winning a free ticket to a house night in a competition in a local student radio. I went, alone. It sounded weird. I went again.
I guess I got into DJing as most people do. I liked music, always tried to choose what others should listen to. Thought – how about I put all these tracks together in a mix. Got a pirate version of Traktor on my laptop, then some tiny controller. I was completely self-taught, pre-youtube! – I just kind of figured it out by listening and deciding what sounds good or not. No one told me about bars, phrasing etc – had to use my ears.. For years I just played for myself and friends. I would say for at least a decade I was a content bedroom DJ with no ambitions to ever play out. This means by the time I did start playing out, I had my ‘style’ and taste already pretty developed.
What is it like running nights in Edinburgh? What are some of your favourite clubs to host nights?
Running techno nights specifically is, I think, an uphill battle 🙂 Classic techno – you know, without pop edits, stabs, Tiktok drops etc. – is just not something that is very popular currently. I think I would have an easier job as a promoter if I wasn’t quite so precise about what EPiKA sound is – a true underground techno, with nights where no one is occupied taking selfies because they just all dance. I don’t do this for money – I do it to promote/popularise a particular sound, so I am ok with it being a difficult job 🙂 I think EPiKA now has a community of people who appreciate us exactly for this – the quality of our music. I know it sounds cocky (“my musical taste is soooo good”), but, you know, being a DJ or a promoter is inherently cocky – if we didn’t think our taste is good, we wouldn’t be doing it 🙂
I have two favourite clubs and I like them for different things. One is The Mash House – it just feels more European to me than other clubs in Edi. Dark, a bit dirty. With an absolutely fantastic soundsystem, just upgraded this February. We rent two connected rooms, so that we can have one proper techno room and one room with slightly softer music, where people can socialise. Second is Sneaky Pete’s. It’s just such a cute venue, with a capacity of only ~100. At the end of the night, everyone is your friend. The DJ booth is not really separated from the punters – you can DJ and watch them arrive sober, get drunk or high, make new friendships and forget about them, share the joy of music with their new friends. DJ cinema.
How do you keep things fresh after many years of running EPiKA?
I don’t hahahha. I guess I challenge the idea that things should be fresh 🙂 I think in my perfect world DJs would never be famous. They would be geeks, invisible, and you would just go to nights based on whether the night is good or not, not based on what kind of a semi-celebrity is playing. Like, if I really like a DJ and their taste and (what I value most, probably) their story-building skills/flow, I could just go and dance to what they play every weekend. But of course, we have evolved over the years, with some residents leaving and others joining. It has been a pleasure and honour to be a part of their music journey! We have a great team now, with incredibly talented DJs and a great behind-the-scenes team.
What are the biggest challenges you face as a promoter of a femme collective?
To be honest, I genuinely don’t think we face challenges specifically due to our gender. Which I think is a great thing to say. I often get messages from young men who tell me I should book them – and they sometimes get upset when they hear they won’t get booked. But that’s an inconvenience, not a challenge. I think the real challenge is building a community that likes good techno:) And the cost of living crisis that makes people less likely to go out and want to pay for tickets.
Of course, individual femme DJs face many issues related to gender. Just the other day in Edinburgh, there was a big club night with more than ten DJs, and not a single of them was not a dude. Really disappointing. This is exactly why EPiKA still has to exist.
How do you go about finding DJs that you want to recruit to EPiKA? You have recently added Leah Kyveli, iluna, and Kairogen as residents.
I just monitor my surroundings:) I constantly search for new DJs to book, and then to see if they are nice and dependable. Good quality music is necessary, but is not sufficient. We want nice people in EPiKA:)
Who are your favourite artists, collectives and labels at the moment?
I never know what to say when I am asked these kinds of questions:) I don’t have favourite things – no favourite books, films, things to eat, albums, tracks, producers. I don’t know whether this means my brain works in a weird way? I do admire individual artists for, like, bits of what they do that is impressive. It’s hard to explain without writing essays 🙂 But, for example, I think the two best remixes in the world are 1) Telepopmusik – Breathe, remixed by Tiga. It’s an absolutely genial remix, keeping the original nearly intact, yet making it completely his own and 2) James Ruskin – Work (Steve Rachmad Mix). But they are not my ‘favourite’ tracks:) The second might be one of the best techno tracks ever made 🙂 And then, I admire Steve Rachmad for his incredible versatility as a producer (from the track I just mentioned all the way to his productions as Sterac Electronics) – but he’s not my favourite producer. Know these sound like random ramblings, but I guess what I am trying to say is: I have many small, sort of, opinions rather than one big ‘wow, this is my favourite something’. As for collectives, I of course support people who try to achieve the same thing as EPiKA does, both in terms of representation in the music industry and bringing more techno to the world. Rarely do these two get addressed by the same crews, though 🙂 In Edinburgh we have, for example, Miss World and Margins – two nights doing incredible work to make the music scene better.
I also genuinely don’t have a favourite label. I recently play lots of stuff from Modularz, Non Series, quite a bit from Soma, Brokntoys, Mechatronica, Autonome. I have a big sentiment for Boxer Recordings 🙂 I buy pretty much everything from Undivulged. It’s a label where you don’t know the name of the producer – all tracks are released under the same alias, but made by different people.
What upcoming plans do you have for 2024 and beyond?
Ha, I guess just slowly, organically – grow! My dream is that our nights are known for the music/vibe, but also that we have a community of punters. That every night, we have a dancefloor of 200+ people who all know each other because they have been to our nights many times before. This just requires putting out regular very high quality nights. And patience. And potentially a dose of delusion.
Short term, we have multiple nights across three different Edinburgh venues in 2024, and a few radio takeovers. We started a collab with the University of Edinburgh Electronic Music Society, too, trying to help train the next generation of DJs. But our plans are long-term. It takes a while to build a following!
Interview By: James Acquaye Nortey-Glover