Featured Artist: Maya Jane Coles

It looks like you're using an ad blocker. That's cool! We get it :)
You can support us by sharing this story or following us on Facebook.

Back to Top

Featured Artist: Maya Jane Coles

Recently billed as Beatport Artist Of The Year 2012, Maya’s rapid insurgence to the forefront of dance music scene has been unexpected, to say the least. After a series of underground hits and remixes, appearing in magazine covers and stealing numerous accolades from the media it seems certain that the spotlight will be on her in the upcoming years.

Started making her own music ever since she was 15 and after several releases in Dogmatik records, the now 24-year old producer got her very first break in 2010 with the release of What They Say on Real Tone Records. Deceptively simple yet catchy, the 6 minutes-long deep house track that sampled Feel The Same by Triple X went to sky-rocket the charts of major sites like Beatport, RA and Traxsource. Two more EPs then immediately followed on the same year, namely Cool Down and Humming Bird which further strengthened her reputation as one promising young artist to watch.

2011 marks her debut as established big-name DJs began to take notice of her existence. She won numerous awards from important figures in the dance music scene, namely DJMag’s Producer Of The Year and Ibiza DJ Award’s Best Newcomer as well as a few more from Mixmag and Resident Advisor. She also began featuring in various magazines interviews and covers shoots, of which she seemed completely comfortable as she stated in an interview with the Guestlist Network that fashion has always been “pretty important” for her as an artist as another way to express herself.

For the fashionable producer, 2012 will just be another year packed with releases dates and busy tours around the world. Just last month, she put out a 70 minutes DJ mix for !K7 Records‘ widely acclaimed DJ Kicks series. For us, this could easily be one of the best mixes we’ve heard this year. The mix stretches just over an hour and exposes her eclectic taste and diverse influences of the current EDM music. You’ll find her switching back and forth playfully between house and tech sounds before moving on to dubstep and other broken beat madness before teasing into electro in some of the final minutes in the mix. Very diverse. All of this coated with a very sublime, at times almost effortless conventional 2-deck mixing style that manages to highlight the best part of each track in the mix.

“I wanted this mix to showcase my diversity,” says Coles. “I don’t just do one thing and I wanted it to reflect that. Most of the mixes I’ve put out there so far have been house based, but I also produce stuff under the Nocturnal Sunshine monicker, which is more two-step/bass influenced stuff. This mix evolved into something that wasn’t just four-to-the-floor.”, Maya on Interview at !K7

If we were to select our favourite tracks in the mix though, it would be a tough call between Jimmy Edgar’s remix of Kris Wadsworth’s Mainline (a perfectly placed take-off track) as well as Nocturnal Sunshine’s Meant To Be that marks the transition between four on the floor to broken beats side of the mix.

“Most of the mixes I’ve put out there so far have been house based, but I also produce stuff under the Nocturnal Sunshine monicker, which is more two-step/bass influenced stuff”, Maya on Interview at !K7

The one half of She Is Danger is hard at work, touring as well as producing new materials and remixes week after week. Just a few days after her remix for Bo Saris is out she already released a mini-mix available exclusively at Spinner. There seem to be no shortage of creative juice flowing in the brain of this mega-talented producer.

Comments

Related Posts