Maya Jane Coles

What can you say about Maya Jane Coles? The 24 year old DJ/Producer is a talented producer that makes all Female DJs say WOW. In 2011, she made her mark by being named ‘Producer of the Year 2011′ by DJ Mag, ‘Best Breakthrough DJ 2011′ by Mixmag, ‘Best Staff Pick 2012′ by Beatport, fan voted ‘Best Newcomer’ at the 14th Ibiza DJ Awards at Pacha, and deubting on the Resident Advisor 2011 Top DJ Poll at #9. That plus gracing the covers of Mix Mag magazine and Anja Schneider, Ellen Allien, Damon Alburn and Tricky all queuing up to offer their praise. We are proud to distribute her productions on Symphonic Distribution distributed label Elite Records and thus, if you don’t know who Maya Jane Coles is, then read up on this!

Well that was 2011 and this is most definitely 2012 going into 2013 where the bar is set to be raised once more for this rather unique British/Japanese producer. An eclectic daughter of similarly eclectic parents; Maya was surrounded by a mixture of sounds from Dub to Punk to Soul and Jazz to World to Classical music around the house. Having learnt to play a few instruments and started to songwriter, production felt like the natural next step.

First producing hip-hop at 15; Maya was determined that she should be able to learn the skills to realise her own vision at every part of the process from production to performance. That’s why now, on a typical Maya Jane Coles record, Maya will have written, produced, engineered, arranged, mixed and performed every element of the track; sometimes she even vocals and designs the sleeve artwork too!

Driven by a constant urge to push herself and evolve; Maya migrated to dubbier sounds and eventually to drum’n’bass around 16; before a huge water shed moment in her life, Maya experienced good underground house! As a result, Maya started on her current journey as a house producer releasing on labels such as Dogmatik and Loco Supreme as well as chalking up DJ gigs at events like the BBC Electric Proms, Sonar and Bestival along the way.

Maya then created her live dub-electronica hybrid project, ‘She Is Danger’ alongside vocalist Lena Cullen. The band played at gigs from the world largest fetish club Torture Garden through to opening for The Orb with their tracks played everywhere from Radio 1 through to KCRW and Per Se.

In particular, She is Danger received a lot of critical and fan attention for their remixes of artists from Gorillaz to Groove Armada with an acclaimed dubby reworking of Massive Attack’s ‘Girl, I Love You’ included on the band’s ‘Heliogland:Deluxe’ album; picking up plaudits such, RCRDLBL ‘Track of the Day’, Qmagazine ‘track of the day’ and ‘Daily Download’ on NME.com and smashing the Hypemachine top 10 multiple times.

For many though it was “What They Say” on Franck Roger’s Real Tone first switched them on to Maya’s work. Supported by a list of dance floor dignitaries that boasts Laurent Garnier, Tony Humphries, Ekkohaus, Steve Bug and Dj Gregory amongst others; it obliterated both the sales and critics charts on Beatport; with the track enjoying a no1, no2 and no 3 placing on Resident Advisor’s chart in October, November and December 2010 respectively!

Further Maya productions have only added to this success with impressive showings for Maya’s “Humming Bird” EP (Hypercolour), ‘Focus Now’ EP (20:20 Vision) and “Beat Faster” EP (Mobilee) garnering peer support as varied as John Digweed to Miss Kittin to Art Dept and earning Maya the May covers of Mixmag, DJ Mag Weekly and Guestlist Network along the way and coverage in Flaunt, ID, Dazed and Confused amongst others. With radio support coming in over 30 countries world wide!

Maya is of course also known for her djing and mixing skills which blend her own productions and remixes with the work of other producers she respects. Alongside guest mixes for the likes of Resident Advisor, Louche, Trace A Line and Defected; Maya started an unbelievable summer with a much lauded Essential Mix which dropped in July and a cover mount mix for Mixmag’s ADE edition where Maya also played Studio 80 to launch the edition!

For most people the mere mastery of music would be enough but not for Maya, her brain just wasn’t built to be constrained so in the future we may more of Maya talents from the world’s of fashion, photography and art but for now Maya is clear – MUSIC definitely comes first!

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