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 overlords DJ Sneak and Derrick Carter - artists 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, and that’s certainly what happened here. 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 hugely respected UK house label Freerange. In the early days of the pandemic, label head Jimpster asked if she would consider submitting demos - and consequently Philippa’s Freerange EP ‘There’s A Ghost in My Synthesizer’ was released in September 2022. The record was well received in house music circles and was followed by another release in December 2023: ‘Latent Magic’. Further to that Philippa’s ‘Rainy Nights’ ep was released on London’s Slothboogie in June 2023 and was a big release internationally for the label. 2023 was also the year Philippa was asked to remix iconic New Zealand band Fat Freddy’s Drop track ‘Bones’, which came out in September. And her remix of classic house cut Roach Motel ‘The Night’, for the UK Faith Fanzine and Defected Records banner label Faith, came out early January 2024. There's much more production work planned for release in 2024, including another EP for Slothboogie, due to drop early June. Plus a collaborative EP with Freerange label head Jimpster - dropping in September.