Since catching her first big international break with 2011 track, Love In Me, UK DJ Laura Jones’ feet have barely touched the ground. She caught up with HAYLEY DAVIS ahead of her appearance at Listen Out on Sunday, September 29, at Ozone Reserve.
For a DJ landing gigs at the biggest venues in house music worldwide, the Leeds-based Laura Jones is as humble and genuine as they come.
A husky voice, off the back of a big night, greets X-Press down the line. “I’ve just been woken up by a leaky roof,” she says.
Gigging almost every weekend since the addictive track, Love In Me took off (usually twice a weekend), Jones has surged to acclaim as one of house music’s hottest commodities.
“It’s happened so quickly I haven’t had much of a chance to sit back and take it all in,” she says. Jones has had to turn down European bookings just to scale things back a bit because she wasn’t getting any time in the studio to actually produce.
It all came about after a 2005 trip to Ibiza, where she and a friend spent the season clubbing and soaking up the scene. It was actually their second time to the island – they decided to head back because they couldn’t get over the post-Ibiza depression that hit them back home.
Jones describes that summer in Ibiza as the turning point for her music. Having released her own tracks and remixes on labels Visionquest and Leftroom, as well as working with more underground labels such as Low Key, she’s now globetrotting and DJing at the very clubs she was once inspired by.
“My two favourite (places to DJ) remain the same because they were places I used to party at quite a lot,” Jones explains. “Standing behind the booths in those places is such an honour. They’re Fabric in London and DC10 in Ibiza.”
She remembers playing those gigs in vivid detail. “Fabric has one of the best sound systems in the world,” she says. “I remember… I took it from 110 BPM to 122 – there are not many places you get to do that.”
DC10 in Ibiza was exactly where the ‘penny dropped’ for Jones eight years ago. “It’s absurd to be playing there years after. It’s funny because a lot of my friends, Robert James, the Hot Creations gang, Clive Henry – basically the same thing happened to them and they fell in love with music in Ibiza.”
Though the Leeds lady isn’t getting much time to get into the studio and make music, she says she’s just capitalising on the run she’s got at the moment.
“I feel very fortunate to be in the position I’m in – it’s quite a hard industry to break into and often you need just one big track to catch an agency’s eye and before you know it, you’re quitting your nine-to-five and travelling all over the world.”
Jones says she’s still learning and finding her style and formula. “In a sense you’re always finding yourself starting out as a new producer, playing all these different venues from 200 capacity clubs to 1500 festival crowds.”
Heading to Australia for the inaugural Listen Out parties across the country, Jones is looking forward to her first Australian tour alongside her friend Miguel Campbell and idol, John Talabot. “I’m really excited to be a part of it,” she concludes.
