OLIVIA MENDEZ
(MORD RECORDS, KONVENT)
INFO
Performance: DJ
Travel: 1 Person from Berlin, Germany
Agent: Taina@outlined-am.com
Olivia is a record proxenete, dealing grooves across territories her unique sound can reach. Strongly influenced by the sounds of Senegalese drums as a child, both as a percussionist and dancer, she eventually fell in love with the post modern aesthetics embedded in Detroit’s industrial landscapes. From Brooklyn to Kiev, she has been queering consciousness through her roaring, pulsing, sonorous soundscapes. Entangled in the UK underground for 5 mad years, Breakbeat, IDM, Experimental, DnB, Dub and Techno were some of the defining genres she explored as an artist. As a passionate vinyl archaeologist she keeps roaming record shops to excavate forgotten pieces that she cross-pollinates with the avant-garde, aiming to keep the magic, encoded in music, alive. Her background as a France and UK based music journalist, artist and event promoter imbues her DJ sets with an eclectic range, playfully leading us through deep, steady minimalistic journeys. She is also the founder of the FLINTA collective KONVENT, intending to create positive spaces to reinvestigate and elevate the discourse on contemporary feminism, through site-specific music and art interventions, where she smashes the patriarchy one beat at the time.
Olivia Mendez began her career out of a deep passion for digging. Raised in a family of music aficionados and record collectors, Olivia naturally began building her own collection – grouping and exploring all the branches of electronic music as well as Jazz, Afrobeat, contemporary and experimental sounds. She spent 5 years in London, from 2006 to 2011, parallely discovering the club world and the various IDM, Drum’n’Bass, Dub and Techno events happening in different parts of East London. This experience ignited a strong passion in her for electronic music and made her realize that she needed to be part of that world.
From 2011, Olivia began working as a music journalist and in 2013 created an online magazine dealing specifically with electronic music: Stellar Fugitives. As an event organizer in Lyon, she was the first to specifically offer Dub Techno as well as 4h+ marathon Techno sets at her parties. In the process she brought a wide range of artists to Lyon for the very first time: Johannes Volk, Freddy K, Ryan James Ford, Benedikt Frey, Oliver Deutschmann, Idealist, Nthng, Deepcord and Marko Fuerstenberg.
Her DJ career grew out of her playing at a free party that had brought together a couple of thousand visitors in the chapel of an abandoned school. This set caught the attention of numerous promoters and artists, kickstarting her DJ career. In 2015, she moved to Berlin and her priorities began to evolve. Her own work as an artist has gradually grown and she has turned her focus to this aspect of her life. In 2016, she became a resident at the event series ‘Particules’ in Lyon, which features both in local clubs as well as off-venues. In 2020 Olivia obtained a diploma in sound engineering and has begun to work on a series of future releases including the launch of her first track on the notorious label Mord Records. From club shows to big festivals, this 33-year-old girl keeps on evolving, surprising and wowing her public.lic.