As a youth growing up in Cagliari, Sardinia, Enrica Falqui became fascinated by electronic sounds of all sorts by sneaking into live concerts. She was completely “spoiled for choice,” she recalls, but she dedicated her early teenage years to competitive athletics and martial arts before redirecting her attention and discipline towards making the electronic music she was listening to. The catalyst for change came at the age of 15 when she “opened her mind” to the immense capabilities of techno, electro, and house by attending a local club called K2. This was the night she “fell in love with electronic music for life” and, several years later, she decided to pursue DJing as a career by moving to Berlin to immerse herself in the German city’s nightlife under the guise of studying language and communication. “I felt the need to broaden my horizons,” she says. “Sardinia was not enough for me anymore. I needed new motivations and stimuli.”
As a self-taught music maker, the product of spending “infinite hours trying and trying, making mistakes, and finally finding my own way,” she needed some time to feel ready enough to put out her work under her own name. In June, eight years after her move, she released her debut solo outing—Plexus, a four-track EP Andrew James Gustav‘s Marginal Returns that became fully formed during the pandemic. “Although obviously uncomfortable in various ways, lockdown gave me the opportunity to spend a lot of time alone in the studio and rediscover myself and my artistic goals,” Falqui explains.
Exhibiting Falqui’s love for both ambient sounds and danceable breakbeats, techno, and house, Plexus is just one side of a versatile artist whose work is grounded in deep experimentation. Outside of her solo work, she teams up with Croatian artist Dea Dvornik as ERIS; the pair released four tracks of hard-hitting techno with a dark edge on DJ Masda and So Inagawa’s Cabaret Recordings in 2018, and followed it a year later with Champions League, a collection of gritty electro and breaks. Alongside Dutch-Italian composer Grand River as Yhdessa in 2018, she’s put out two tracks made entirely with the Vermona E-Piano, an electric piano built in 1978, and she also DJs across Europe, solo and with Dvornik. All of this is driven by a desire to fully achieve her “potential as a human being.”
Whereas Falqui’s previous studio mixes have been tailored towards the club, for her EDMjunkies podcast she’s created something warmer and introspective. She wanted to make something that feels like a “living organism, something alive,” she says, and she’s achieved this by weaving together different genres as an expression of her different and sometimes even opposing sides and moods. Recorded this past week in her Berlin apartment, it’s the latest demonstration of a rising artist exhibiting the full range of her tastes and talents.
01. What have you been up to recently?
I am currently studying German, digging frantically for new music in record stores across Berlin, and gigging around. Being a self-taught musician I’ve only just started to study piano: it’s never too late, or at least that’s what they say!
02. What have you been listening to during lockdown?
I’ve been listening to a lot of South American music—Toña La Negra, Chavela Vargas, Victor Jara—and all genres and styles of music actually. What I listen to depends on the mood of the day. I also very diligently listen to all of the records I play in my sets; I feel it is crucial to know and understand each track thoroughly.
03. Where did you record this mix?
I recorded it just before the deadline you gave me in my own studio in Friedrichshain, Berlin. I work better under pressure!
04. How did you go about choosing the tracks you’ve included?
I usually start from one or two carefully, pre-selected tracks which set the theme of the mix and act as an inspiration catalyst. Beginning from there I build the set intuitively: I more or less already know which direction it should take.
05. What’s next on your horizon?
Making more and more music, digging for new records, travelling for gigs (both solo and as part of my duo project ERIS), enjoying life and whatever it may bring.
EDMjunkies has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to hear the podcast offline you will need to subscribe to our Select channel to listen offline, or subscribe to EDMjunkies+ to download the file. The move to Mixcloud Select will ensure that all the producers with music featured in our mixes get paid. You can read more about it here.
Full EDMjunkies+ Members can download the podcast below. If you’re not an EDMjunkies+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.
Editor’s Note: Falqui has opted not to provide a tracklisting for this mix.
