Misstress Barbara, a DJ best known for her love of hard beats, was born in Sicily in 1975. She moved to Montreal at age 8, where she has lived ever since.
When she first began performing, she described her main style as Drummy Funky Pumpin’ Techno. Her most important musical influences came from jazz and the grooves of Latin music. Regardless of the influences, her hard beats have always been the driving force in her sets.
These days, she is playing a techy, minimal and electro-funk sound. As she puts it, she still has love for techno, but she also wants to play new sounds and rhythms from a multitude of different genres.
You can preview one of Misstress Barbara’s mixes below, and check out her site for more free mixes and information about her and her work.
Misstress Barbara DJ Profile
She holds a degree in Communication Studies, specialized in Film, and obtained a license to fly gliders and Cessna airplanes at age 16. Her creative involvement with music began when she picked up the drums at age 12 and started playing in bands. For the next seven years she was into classic rock, punk music, and all the hard music of the time.
In 1994 her musical interests shifted to electronic music. While attending numerous events, she fell in love with watching DJs work. A year later she traded in her drum kit for two turntables and a mixer.
In the spring of 1996, she got her first booking and hasn’t looked back since; playing all the major cities from North to South America, Europe and Asia along with Australia.
Misstress Barbara has played alongside the most respected artists such as Bjork, Prodigy, Carl Cox, Richie Hawtin, Masters at Work, Tiesto, Sven Vaeth and many others. Her various musical tastes have led her to play many important clubs worldwide like Twilo, Crobar (NYC, USA), Velvet Underground, The End (London, UK), The Womb (Tokyo, Japan), Fuse (Brussels, Belgium), Stereo (Montreal, Canada), Florida 135 (Fraga, Spain), Loft (Barcelona, Spain), Zouk (Singapore), Rex (Paris, France), Aloca and Lov.E (Sao Paulo, Brazil). She is also a resident at the Ibiza Meganite Events at club Privilege, alongside Mauro Picotto.
She has also played many big events like SONAR (Spain), AWAKENINGS (Holland), I LOVE TECHNO (Belgium), MONEGROS (Spain), and one of her highlights from the beginnings of her DJ career was playing at “Fashion Cares” in Toronto; a 5000 people AIDS-Benefit fashion show party, hosted by K.D. Lang and Rupaul.
Barbara began buying studio equipment shortly after the beginning of her DJ career and spent the next twelve months familiarizing herself with the equipment and working on original tracks without really finishing them. The real work started once she finished university and dedicated herself full time to a solid studio work.She created her techno label Relentless Music in 1999, which name had to be changed in the beginning of 2003 to avoid legal issues with another company holding the same name in the UK. This is when she created ITURNEM.
Barbara has a weakness for House Music and for that, she created the alias name of Barbara Brown, to produce and play House Music without confusing her fans and the people who buy her Techno tunes. Now when she reflects on this difference in identity, she wishes that instead of creating an alias to play different styles of music to lessen the confusion of her fans, it might have been a better choice to remain always as Misstress Barbara, and just be known for playing good music of all genres. It is a given that she built her career on Techno, but as all people do, she evolved and wanted to open her record box to all genres of fantastic music, stepping outside the techno sound she is branded for.
As a producer, Barbara has released records on some of the most respected labels on the planet, like Border Community, Bedrock and Intec to name a few, and she also had a few of her tracks licensed for films and videogames. In 2002, her track Never Could Have Your Heart was been licensed for the Play Station 2 videogame Midnight Club II, she also has had her track ?Crash and Burn? licensed to the film ?Saved By The Belles? and ?Effett Karma? licensed to Montreal film ?Pure? that is being presented at Cannes.
She plans on doing more music for all forms of media and focusing on more cross-over oriented projects in the future, to advance her career as a producer.
Source: Misstress Barbara (remember the 4 s’s!)
