Interview with Colette & DJ Heather

I had the pleasure of speaking with 2 leading ladies of the electronic music scene on the eve of their double disk CD launch on the OM label entitled (quite aptly), Colette & DJ Heather. The duo spun at Stereo, Montreal on July 21, 2006.

Last Friday, music lovers with their priorities in check were among the many at Stereo to be treated to the turntable wizardry of DJ’s Heather and Colette, by far two of the top, pioneering DJ’s the house music scene has to offer. As one of their twenty one plus international tour stops in promotion of their latest double disc CD released on heavyweight San Fran label, House of OM Recordings; The Colette & DJ Heather double header delightfully presents their unique flavors and fortes that stand fabulously on their own and as a package. “We like similar artists, but it’s like you’d read the track listing and as a dry read it may seem or feel similar, but in listening the CD’s they’re completely different experiences” says Heather of the album.

Colette Marino is one of the four members of Chicago’s first female DJ collective Superjane. Of Colette Marino’s many credits is being among the select group of DJ’s who’d sing to a track she spins. The Chicago native with training in classical music, recalls her beginnings in the biz “When I was in high school, I think I was 16. A friend of mine also from Chicago, DJ Lego asked me to come and sing over one of his sets. I thought it would be cool, so I did! That’s seriously how it started. It was really simple. I would sing through some headphones plugged into the microphone jack on a mixer – really old school. I mean, I already loved house music but he’s the one who really pushed me to sing with house music. From that point on I was really focused on being a house vocalist. Then at the same time I’d been carting records for a while, and decided to really make my way as a DJ – I could sing as well – so I’d sing over my sets and really began making the whole process for myself.

Despite the hectic promotional tour ahead of her, Colette is looking forward to performing at Stereo for the first time. “Playing in new cities is amazing and it’s really fun. The flying everywhere though…” (laughs). A great thing about this tour is that I get to travel with my best friend. Heather and I have been great friends for a really long time and have also been Djing for a long time, but we’ve never done a tour this extensive. So it’s comforting being with someone who’s going though the same things you are.”

Also keeping Colette on a high note is her song Hypnotized being featured on the Devil wears Prada Soundtrack “It’s the first time that I’ve had a song featured in a big Hollywood movie. I had a different version of Feeling Hypnotized featured in a Motorola commercial that ran worldwide. It’s really so cool, because you spend so much time working on these tracks and you don’t really think about where there going to end up or who’s going to like them. Really it’s a great feeling; when a song hits, especially in more of a commercial world. With underground music especially in the States it’s not mainstream. When you get something like a film, it’s amazing because it will hopefully introduce more people to the music. You know, it’s really too bad that more people are not exposed to more of it [House music] at the end of the day. It’s really a fantastic movement”

One thing that her increasingly busy schedule doesn’t allow her to do is to collaborate with various women’s organizations to raise money and awareness for causes like breast cancer or battered women’s shelters “It’s something that I don’t really get to do enough. I usually try to play a couple of times a year for different charities because music is such a great way to bring people together and especially for good causes… Having fun and donating your time to something that can benefit other people – doing something a couple of times a year is really not that big a deal, but if you can help, you should. And if we all could do our part it would really add up.

Colette’s Superjane partner Chi-town native Heather Robinson again displays her prolific mixing and producing skills. Head of Black Cherry her new label, Heather is undeniably a world-class talent who’s literally worked her way up – having paid her dues in developing her career doing everything from working in record stores to labels, to touring, she‘s particularly conscientious in putting her driving, chunky Chicago sound mixed CD together. “What I tried to do was make sure it had that OM signature as well, hence the House of OM – there are certain touches that I want – to have it where it feels very OM-like - to be solid upon repeated listening. That was very much a conscious effort that I wanted to put out there. It was definitely one of the hardest ones I’ve ever done where I was very meticulous in terms of how I put it together. There is definitely a calculated spontaneity when you’re doing a mixed CD like this. You’re really thinking about the above and beyond with the project because you want to make sure that it does a lot of different things.”

Coming from a very broad musical back ground, Heather is no stranger to working with the A-listers of the underground music scene, Heather’s collaborations with some of Chicago old and new school heavy hitters like Chez Damier, Derrick Carter, JP Donaldson, Johnny Fiasco, easily make fertile fodder for a bedroom DJ’s wet dream. Yet one of the things that Heather attributes to her success is her early day start as a Hip-hop DJ. “One of the two things that really helped me out was having a hip-hop background and learning to play records in an environment where I was responsible for the music for 4 – 6 hours a night, pretty much every Saturday night. You learn about certain sections of the evening culture; learning to read the crowd to a certain extent…but all those things really helped me understand the art of DJ-ing on many different levels. With the hip-hop background, that was a skill thing for me and was very educational, and a lot those applications apply to house.”

At the end of the day Heather’s CD message is simple “There’s a lot of underground kids who may or may not be familiar with me, whereas an OM artist like Colette, she’s already part of the roster and has a built in network, so in a way, it was a way for me to “piggy-back” her “fan base”. I wanted this to be an introduction to me, so to speak and something that was palatable enough where you can really enjoy both and not be scared off from one or the other. It’s basically my interpretation of what a House of OM CD could sound like. It’s a little bit of perkiness and jazz, and eclectic but with just enough of the Chicago boogie stuff, that you can listen to at the beach, in your car, or pre, during and post of a party.