Having recently moved to London, and growing up between Singapore and Ascot, Jasmine (a.k.a. JVZ) is yet to be inaugurated into the underground music scene here: she’s more familiar with Zoom at the moment. Nevertheless, her energy remains infectious even through a screen, and her deep-rooted passion for dance music can’t be mistaken. “Ever since I was a kid [my brother] would always show me loads of dubstep and stuff, and I was always really into it,” she explains. “All my friends, they’d always listen to normal music and I’d just be banging out house music and different electronic stuff!!”
But it was her first tastes of raving in her mid-teens that changed things. “I started listening to drum and bass and I just really fell in love with it, I was like oh my god…I just wanted to know how to be able to put it all together!” she muses. Inspired by the genre-pushing sounds of Ivy Lab, Alix Perez, and his label 1985, as a DJ Jasmine is drawn in by drum ‘n’ bass’s versatility. “[DnB] is such a huuuge genre. All the sub genres, and the people that are attracted to them, are so different,” she says. “So I like to lean towards that [Ivy Lab] kind of sound because it's almost like a new direction of drum and bass, a lot of very experimental stuff, and it's a refreshing way of hearing the genre.” Like most of us, Jasmine is excited to get stuck in to London’s post-‘rona party scene: “honestly whatever event I can get my hands on I will go to,” she tells me, laughing. “Because what sucks is when I turned eighteen, that was when the pandemic hit!”
So what’s she been cooking up while we’ve all been stuck indoors? The lockdown has given our young selectress a chance to hone her skills, and focus on what it is she really loves. “Before I was just sort of like doing it as a little hobby and I wasn’t really taking it anywhere,” she explains. “But the pandemic was the first time I put out, like, a really good mix that got a lot of attention.” Since, her confidence has grown as she develops her style: “that was the first time I was like ‘oh, I can actually do this,’ and I think as a DJ it's really important to be confident with what you do,” she tells me. “I'm like, ‘oh my God people actually like what I’m doing, and people are listening to this!’ and I was super excited by that.”
Having grown up with brothers with similar interests, JVZ isn’t afraid to hold her own in a scene dominated by guys. “Girls, especially in drum and bass, are siiiiick! Like they are so great; all these female DJs know how to bring it a bit differently,” she says, grinning. I agree with her that in dance music, where there’s not typically been an established place for women, you have little choice but to do your own thing: “I think being a girl you're kind of forced to do it a little bit differently.” As a result, she’s been pushing herself as a fellow presenter on UCL’s Rare FM, offering up more DnB treats on a regular basis.
In our latest segment of our own mix series, SUPER Bleached, Jasmine’s technique is seamless: “I just kind of go with the flow […] I like things to progress but not in a way that's just everything at once, or too much, you know?” As a result, she manages to take us on a well-curated journey across the expanses of the genre, making sure to stop off at some hefty basslines and bone-rattling drops along the way.
JVZ has hit the ground running and it’s clear that she’s ready to dive straight into the London nightlife scene – like a rave-ready balloon, she’s about to burst. For now, we’ll be channelling some of that infectious energy through your wavelengths this Saturday. Tune in from 19:00 BST via www.bleached.club // www.twitch.tv/bleachedclub.
