iKeda: Those dresses ended up being a flop. My thing before music was doing fashion design, painting, and airbrushing. I didn\u2019t know anything about producing clothes. I got a credit card and spent like a thousand pounds getting this massive roll of fabric made, and figured if I sell, like, 25 of these dresses, I\u2019ll make it all back. But then the only person that wanted one was PinkPantheress.<\/p>\n
What kind of art were you practicing at Central Saint Martins?<\/p>\n
My whole life art has been my thing. When I was young, I used to draw manga\u2014not the classic ones like Naruto, but the really cute, girly ones: Shugo Chara!, Lucky Star, Hello Kitty. I used to be so obsessed with the Hello Kitty cartoons. Then, I applied to CSM, but I didn\u2019t really think I would get in because it\u2019s hard to get into and I hadn\u2019t really found my style yet. But I really connected with the interviewer. I was mostly just doing a lot of painting. But I was holding myself back. I can be one of those people who just sticks with the thing they\u2019re really good at and that keeps you from developing at other stuff.<\/p>\n
Did you feel you were stuck in a box of your own making? Did you meet people at school who shook that up?<\/p>\n
Definitely. My specific course really sucked, I\u2019m not gonna lie. It was broken up into 2D, 3D, XD, and 4D, but I should have been in XD instead of 2D because that\u2019s where everyone was doing, like, performance art and sculpture. I thought that was where I belonged. The people in my course were really boring. It was fine art. I had a couple of friends that were really cool, though, like this one girl from a really rich Chinese family who would take me out to dinner and buy bottles of wine from the 1920s or whatever. I made friends in the fashion course, mainly the ones who were studying women\u2019s wear.<\/p>\n
How did you express your interest in music then? Blogs? Parties? Talking to friends?<\/p>\n
Mainly Tumblr. You could pick a song to go with your page.<\/p>\n
What did you pick?<\/p>\n
A lot of Azealia Banks. Lana Del Rey. M.I.A. I used to be obsessed with Metronomy. But those girls were my mains when I was like 16. With Azealia and Lana, I really liked the unreleased stuff. I don\u2019t want to be that annoying person, but I am that kind of person. Like Azealia had this Strokes cover, \u201cBarely Legal,<\/a>\u201d it was so good. Then, Lana had this one called \u201cTake Me To Paris<\/a>\u201d that keeps getting ripped off the internet, and it\u2019s really sad because that\u2019s one of my favorite songs by them.<\/p>\n What did posting songs on Tumblr turn into?<\/p>\n From there, I started making mixes to go on my Tumblr, and then my SoundCloud. I just made them on Rekordbox, and didn\u2019t have any CDJs, but would just use my computer to turn down one track and turn up another. Completely focused for like 30 minutes, because if I touched anything, it was over. Then, in my last year of Uni, I started DJing at pubs and queer events in London.<\/p>\n