SPOTLIGHT: DJ Ezza's journey from Bedroom to Budapest
Words: Louise Whittaker
For many of us, last year provided the time & space to try something new to break the tedium of lockdown. DJ Ezza picked up a new hobby and met with Freestyle Bristol to tell us about how it changed her life.
My name is Erin Pearce and I am 22 years old. I’m a DJ and the genres I play are DnB, Jungle, Breaks and a bit of House and Garage. I started DJing during the first lockdown, so I’m really really new to it all. Like everyone else I was a bit bored so decided to pick up a new skill – I chose DJing and I found it really helped me get through it.
After a lot of practice at home using borrowed equipment, Ezza found herself growing in confidence and decided to turn her hobby into a full time job. Not just DJing, but also connecting with like-minded individuals at home and abroad.
I’ve since become a resident on Limitless D&B, Stomper Sounds and Dazed and have managed to gain a few gigs. I’m set to play in Budapest this summer with Dazed (the Bristol-based underground dance events organisation).
My experience as a new DJ and a female has been quite interesting because I feel like this scene is being really encouraging of women recently, but there is a real divide between male and females. I have been getting recognised but on the majority of the big shows it’s still mainly male DJs headlining and only the females doing the support so there is still a bit of work to be done but I feel it’s moving in the right direction.
Not content with just developing her new skills and getting a name for herself, in the middle of a pandemic Ezza also set up Blenders, an Event Company to address the lack of diversity and inclusivity in the music scene especially around it’s gender issues.
So Blenders Club is the Event Company I came up with. Our mission is to encourage good music, for people that are good at the craft of blending and promoting diversity and inclusivity in the bass music scene.
I don’t know why I started it when I did! It was a risky time to start an Events Company, in the middle of a lockdown, but anytime can be really. It wasn’t just to promote myself but all the others I had met, and not just drum & bass but other genres of dance music too. I made it to give them a platform to promote their art & music.
I knew we wouldn’t be putting events on because we started in December and obviously it was in a lockdown! In the meantime we’ve started a different guest mix series every week and that’s been going really well.
We hope to put on events when the clubs are open and I’ve been doing a lot with GoatShed who recently opened a new studio in Bristol. Their main one is in Southampton and they’ve been pretty big in the drum & bass scene. I’ve been there a couple of times with labels like Stomper Sounds and Limitless D&B and yeah – that’s really cool. They’re changing the way people livestream because it’s become so popular during lockdown and giving it more of a professional space and setting which is really fun to do.
Success normally comes after a long time working at it but DJ Ezza has been lucky in seeing things blow up over a matter of months
It’s all taking off really quickly. It started off on Facebook because that’s where all the livestream’s are and once that got traction my Instagram page started to grow which is really cool (it’s grown a little bit on TikTok but I still haven’t gone viral yet!)
Post lockdown I’ve got a few things on the go. In May we have a socially-distanced event at Dare 2 Club (ex Blue Mountain Club) and that’s with Stomper Sounds, the 02 in Bristol with Dazed and then at the end of July I should be in Budapest, also with Dazed.
This was meant to happen in Prague in March and of course because of Covid it got rescheduled so now it’s in the summer. To be honest with you, I don’t know whether it will happen or not. As of today they’re saying, ‘yeah it’s fine it’s going to go ahead’ but that could change with all the government legislation and stuff – it could be that they might have to socially distance but I still don’t know.
Whatever happens, we at Freestyle Bristol have our fingers crossed for you and will be looking out for DJ Ezza’s Bristol gigs.