DJital Essence

Get closer to the Grooves and keep up with what's Vital by adding DJitalEssence on Facebook or MySpace.. The first releases from DJitalEssence on Vital Grooves are now available@ Vital Grooves - Living Music - A Way Of Life! http://www.vitalgrooves.com Promo's available on request @ info@vitalgrooves.com The journey so far.. In the beginning there was Susie and she had a groove. This groove took her from her hometown in Glasgow to live in London at the tender age of 19 where a new journey began. Already a music lover, being in London allowed Susie to taste some new and diverse flavours. In the late 80’s she followed dance music genre’s from Soul to Acid House, early 90's she found the underground house/garage dance scene in London and it was there, through friends who were DJ’s, she was inspired to start mixing! Susie found the basics came quite naturally, so in 1994 she got her own decks, taught herself to mix and began doing spots at house parties which led to working in clubs and bars in the London area and DJ Essence was born! DJ Essence was given a residency in the first all female DJ line up started by Pure Silk Promotions @The SW1 Club by Femmine Pressure’s Deejay Touch. Essence also started playing guest slots on London’s Chicago 90.6 FM, later renamed Mission 90.6 FM where she was offered a weekly show that she held for over 3 years. Through this she was contacted by Confetti Records and signed by them to work as a DJ and Trainee Label Assistant in 1999 dealing with the pressing, distribution, promotions and more insight into the industry as a whole. During the period from 1996 – 2002 Lady DJ Essence played at venues such as Brighton @The Escape Club (Lemon Tea Promotions), various parties for the Nottinghill Carnival, The Cyba (W1), The Gardening Club (Covent Garden), The Rendevous (Neasden), The Swan (Stevanage), Raindance@The Rocket (Holloway), Slap N Tickle@Browns (VG Promotions), Club Space (Stratford), Bar Latino (Islington), The Zebra Bar (Soho), Blah Blah's (Hornsey), Garage Nation (Stratford Rex), Club Embargo's (Chelsea), The Powerhouse (Finsbury Park), Club "La Differente"(Green Lanes), 291 Bar (Hackney Road), Club Propaganda (EC1), Imperial Gardens (Camberwell), The Temple (Tottenham), The Rhythm Rooms (Borehamwood), The Station Nightclub (Tottenham), Grapes (Walthamstow), Browns (Ipswich), Pure Silk@ SW1 Club..and often at "after parties" which she loved, because this was where she could play more underground tunes and get away with a deeper selection for the connoisseurs. Having lived and survived in London on her own for 10 years and gone through the University of Life and School of Hard Knocks Essence decided it was time for a change and came back home to Glasgow with no definite plans for the future. She launched herself into an HND college course in Multimedia with Web Design with only very basic prior computing experience and managed to gain merits in her qualifications. Her desire to learn to produce music caused her to take things further and go on to University to study a degree in Audio Technology with Multimedia. All she ever wanted to do was to make music, and at the time this & self learning were the only routes available. These courses she studied were more technically based than musically creative, however this has allowed Essence to realise more skills and prove her abilities to be technical as well as creative. She now has an advanced level of mulitimedia computer skills that are extremely valuable in everything she does. These skills brought the "analog" DJ Essence of the past up to date with digital technologies and hence she became DJitalEssence! Now she's producing her own music, remixing the works of others and building her own label Vital Grooves as a business and platform to expose her works and in the future others too! Though DJitalEssence as a DJ still loves her Technic 1210 decks, she has embraced CD & Mp3 mixing. She loves AbletonLive software both for creating mixes and as a production tool. Her style as a DJ is deep and sexy..for the connoisseurs of house..and always with hints of other flavors mixed in for extra good taste! As far as production goes DJitalEssence loves Propellarheads Reason software as a base to create the structure of her music, slaving it to AbletonLive or other DAW’s for additional control, instruments and effects. She prefers not to use pre-recorded sampled loops from other people’s music as she enjoys the process of building her own rhythms and layering things from silence. She personally composes, arranges, produces engineers and masters all her own works to the best of her ability, and is constantly learning and developing her knowledge and skills. As a digital musician DJitalEssence, like others, uses her sound palate to create her musical expression and this outlet has served as a great comfort and support to her through some challenging times. The emotions of these times can be felt in her earlier productions from her back catalogue, which one day will be re-grooved and released. Although most of the music she produces is rhythmical in nature, it varies from project to project, some is ambient, some quite orchestral and other tracks more dance orientated. There's a lot of dub influence, early electro, deep house, garage and old skool to be found in her sound which is now becoming recognisable as her own. DJitalEssence lives and loves music & the many dimensions of creativity she possesses, waves make sense to her, sounds inspire her, rhythms arouse her and basslines groove her soul!