A Conversation With Raw Silk

As part of our ongoing collaboration with Keep Hush, we spoke to Grace & Steph from RAW SILK on their creative process, and what it's like to work with your best friend...

What inspired you to begin?

It was living and partying in Melbourne together that actually inspired us to start DJing. We both wanted to recreate the same sense of freedom and loose nature of the parties we encountered there, and so decided to start a small night in Peckham to bring it back into our lives. It’s always better together!

Could you tell us a bit about your process? How do you put a mix together? How do you two work together?

We try to meet up weekly to share music with each other; whether its old rare groovy gems that Grace has found whilst working and digging, or a new release thats cropped up. Our sound is a bit different, so we like to get together.

When playing out we vibe off the crowd and each other so never quite know exactly which direction our sets will go in. For a recorded mix we like to strategically plan the order of the songs - this can sometimes lead to perfectionist re-recording and the odd bicker, but generally we think that our difference in styles compliment each other well and offers something a bit more refreshing to listen to.

What keeps you going even when things get tough?

Working as a pair definitely keeps us going, there’s actually nothing better than getting to play the tunes you love with one of your best pals.

We also like to hope that as two new female DJ’s, we’re encouraging and empowering other people to do the same. That thought is one of our biggest motivations for doing this - we’ve been massively influenced by seeing other women out playing the music they love.

Music should be shared and enjoyed together, regardless of gender, background, race etc but we’re all about supporting the other girls out there. Not taking yourself too seriously definitely helps, we’re very lucky to be able to do something we love.

Anything coming up we should know about?

We’re playing for Bugged Out! at Oslo in September, and we have our debut at Fabric supporting Crazy P in October as well as a few other events which are on Facebook & Resident Advisor.

We play for Percolate events as residents so we’re supporting Todd Terje, Henry Wu and more bomb acts over the Autumn/Winter season. We also have a monthly show on Netil Radio on the last Monday of the month 1-3pm, which gives us the chance to play a more eclectic & weirder mix than when we’re out in the dance.

Listen to the latest from Raw Silk, including mixes for Netil Radio over on their Soundcloud.

Keep Hush run invite-only music events in London, to find out more visit them on Facebook.