!K7 Records

The next instalment in the classic DJ-Kicks series is a selection of rapturous house, blissed-out breaks, and transcendent rave from the high priestess of the motherbeat herself, Chicago’s Eris Drew. DJ, producer, musician, long-time resident at Chicago’s Smartbar, and co-creator of the T4T LUV NRG party and label, Eris Drew has been DJing since the early 90s, and has since taken her ecstatic house and high-energy, uncompromising mixing style to clubs, raves, and festivals worldwide.

Eris’ DJ-Kicks mix is 79 minutes of, as she puts it “the funky, emotional, ecstatic house-and-breaks backbone that defines my sound”, and includes tracks, remixes, and exclusives by Moby, Calisto, DJ Garth, Onionz, DJ Who, Kair, Hoof, and Toka Project, as well as from Eris herself and partner Octo Octa.

The result of countless hours of digging, her selection delves into the rattling breaks, rave stabs, and haunting strings of classic and lost ‘90s hybrid house-and-breaks jams, and matches them with more recent digs, the mix moving back and forth between emotive, bittersweet, and evocative, to raw, tough, and twisted with consummate ease. Put together on two turntables and a mixer in her New Hampshire cabin studio, this is more than just a collection of hype tunes: “I recorded it in my cabin with the violent world rolling around me. Being in my refuge in the forest was important; the mix needed to carry the feeling of that place and the inspiration I draw from it.” This is a mix that nails the Eris Drew sound and approach, where her perfectly pitched selections, seamless transitions, and high-energy cuts, scratches, and spinbacks are all employed in the service of a single aim: “I wanted the mix to feel like climbing a mountain - to produce an ecstatic sensation of overcoming.”

Eris first began mixing records together when she was 18 and hasn’t really stopped since, honing the skills that went into this mix for over three decades. As she says: “I’m an all-vinyl DJ with 30-plus years of mixing behind me, and I feel the mix reflects that.” Many of these records have been with Eris for years and have travelled the world with her. Some of them, you can hear their age, because she specifically asked the mastering engineer to preserve this in the reproduction. Raw and real: this is the sound of Eris Drew.