Philippa
Berlin based, born in New Zealand, Philippa started DJing in the halcyon days of the late 90s, an era ring fenced by Motorbass’s smoky ‘french touch’ deep house and the American overloads DJ Sneak and Derrick Carter - DJs who were endlessly churning out grinding disco loops aimed at brutalising astute global dancefloors into pulverised messes. House music was by turns art based, intellectual and relentlessly fun/ctional.
These cutting edge international sounds made their way to clubs in New Zealand where a young and impressionable Philippa earnestly lapped them up. Working by day in seminal Auckland record store BPM, nights she learnt to DJ in the city’s brilliant corners of sound. As a training ground there's nothing quite like the weekly residencies of local scenes - breeding grounds of talent where artists are nurtured and toughened up by the critical presence of week in / week out dancefloors. Philippa would go on to become a leading light in the New Zealand underground. By the time she left in 2013 she had headlined six national tours under her party banner Chicago Disco, won music industry awards and accolades, and hosted Friday Drive on the nation’s electronic music radio station George FM for seven years.
Curiosity however, can be a bitch. Questions had been entering Philippa’s mind - were European dance floors really as intoxicating as they seemed from afar? What could she learn if she leapt from the safe waters of her natural home? Moving to Berlin in 2013 perhaps inevitably meant that DJing took a back seat, and as such these years were difficult. With no production background to act as a business card, Philippa came to a vital realisation - that she could either “start again” and work her way up through the city’s innumerable clubs, or embrace a new era of learning and double down on music production. She chose the latter. Working by day teaching tertiary level students in an institution of arts and technology, Philippa spent weekends focused on learning a new craft - not one of rotating records, but one of synthesisers, samplers and sound design. Immersed in this world Philippa went to ground, emerging finally in 2019 with the birth of her record label At Peace - named so to honour what she’d given up by moving to the often brutal grey city that is Berlin, and the frame of mind she’d decided to adopt in response to those losses.
It was through the launch of this label that Philippa’s sound came to the attention of Freerange’s label head Jimpster. Using Facebook’s messenger app, he reached out to her in the early days of the pandemic to ask if she would mind submitting demos to the label. Queue huge amounts of surprise and joy (plus a substantial amount of stress, anxiety and work alongside concurrently finishing a Masters in Creative Music Production) and a few years later the fruits of that project - “There’s A Ghost in My Synthesizer” EP was released to much critical acclaim in September 2022.
Further to that she’s been working with another London based record label - Slothboogie - and the Rainy Night EP was released in summer 2022.
Philippa returns to Freerange for her follow up release. On the Latent Magic EP we’re treated to three new tracks which highlight Philippa’s deft touch and musical approach to making interesting
and left field house music.
