Barcelona based DJ/Producer RAVEN just premiered her debut Flames EP and its fireeeee.
It’s a dark cesspool of house, acid, backbeat-techno-underground goodness. Hard hitting, it can be played at raves and underground spots around the city. But what’s also refreshing is her sense of melody, as Raven’s voice brings songwriting and song structure back to the clubs and DIY dance floors.
Originally hailing from Toronto, Raven is now based in Barcelona and involved in the underground community there. We caught up with her to peel back the layers behind her boundary-pushin Flames EP and learn more about what’s poppin underground in Spain.
INTERVIEW
S3R News: Can you let us know a little bit about your artistic background, where Raven and this EP blossomed from?
Raven: It’s been a long journey with music. I’ve been involved in music in some way since I was a child. I’m always still learning and growing as an artist and there’s always been a pull in different directions, So I’ve always had different aliases. I’ve been trying to find a formula to put all my influences in one and make something that sounds like “me”. Raven is my real name and this is my solo project, production, lyrics, vocals 🙂
S3R News: Love the vocal production on tracks like Insomnia. What vox techniques were you experimenting with there, alongside other production techniques that you delved into on Flames?
Raven: Thank you! As a general rule I like for the background vocals to have some kind of digital effect and have the lead to carry the emotion of the track and keep a raw feeling. It’s more about the cadence / performance of the lead vocals and I use effects selectively.
S3R News: You can tell the ep is a part of the underground, not a replica trying to be. Tell us a little bit about the hardcore rave and underground club community in Barcelona?
Raven: I am a huge fan of earlier electronic music; Acid House, New Beat, Electro, Rave, Tribal etc. In my music and DJ sets, I try as much as I can to show where the club music (mainstream and underground), we listen to now came from.
I’ve only been in Barcelona for a year. I find Barcelona’s rave scene and club community to be quite separate. On one hand u have the goto clubs like Input, Apollo, Razzmatazz, Moog, Macarena and more, which on any given weekend you can hear Electronic Music. Then there’s the raves, set up and ran by a few different collectives, Hex is the biggest one. You can sometimes find some of the ravers at the clubs, but u wouldn’t necessarily find the clubbers at the raves, if that makes any sense… I find the techno clubs here also to be quite hetero, so I think there’s a lot of room for growth when it comes to the electronic music scene here in Barcelona. But Spanish people love to party lol.
