Artwork borrowed from a painting by Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka.

CF: how and where was this mix recorded?

I’ve been slowly choosing tracks for the mix for a few weeks now, but I finally sat down to put the mix together (in Ableton Live) during a week holiday here in Krakow. I am attending the Unsound festival (one of the most magical festivals in the most magical of cities!), and I found a free afternoon to dedicate to the mix.

CF: tell us a bit about yourself, you’re a DJ, producer, label owner, and blogger. how do you keep a healthy balance between all of your facets?

I wouldn’t say I have a healthy balance! Haha. Along with my “day job”, it’s really difficult to stay active in each of these musical spheres, but my usual approach is to take it one project at a time. And I try not to stress too much about it, and just have a good time with it. I tend to produce tracks only when I have a specific idea in mind, so I am not one of those people who is glued to their computer making just any beats all the time. DJing is pure pleasure for me. Blogging is something I allow myself when I have some free time – which these days is very little!

CF: you currently curate Her Beats, a blog focused on women in electronic music. how has it evolved since its beginning and where do you see it going in the future?

It all started with a group I formed on Last.fm in 2008, only because I was shocked that such a group didn’t exist yet, so I guess you could say I just wanted to fill a void. When Facebook became more popular I was, once again surprised that there wasn’t a page on the subject there either, so it was only natural to migrate activities there. Now we have over 3000 fans on Facebook, and it seemed only natural to expand to a blog format where I can do a little more than simply post links.

With Last.fm & Facebook I really felt like I should try to represent women in all types of electronic music, even if I personally don’t connect with the music, but you’re right in that Her Beats is much more actively “curated”. I try to write about artists and music that I really love, and the podcast series reflects that as well.

CF: what do you normally listen to at home? which are your top three favorite albums?

Since I started getting serious about DJing a couple years ago, the vast majority of my home listening feels like some sort of frantic race to keep on top of new music. It’s fun, but it can get exhausting and it’s a weird feeling to feel like listening to music is “work” sometimes. When I really want to get self-indulgent, I usually turn to more ambient stuff, dub techno, techno, deep dubstep, and some more experimental indie or rock stuff too. And in this case I tend to look backwards instead of listening to the absolute newest stuff out there. There is no chance I can think of my top three albums, sorry! I have too many to name!

CF: what is your favorite thing about living in Warsaw?

Warsaw is so incredibly vibrant. People like to say that it feels like Berlin 5 years ago, which I can understand. What I really like is that Warsaw is very tuned into global musical trends and innovations so we have a lot of interesting music and people are open to new stuff.

CF: looking ahead, what can we expect from Concrete Cuts and yourself as a producer?

As long as there are still Polish producers out there we’ll be on a steady release schedule with Concrete Cut for a long time! The next release will come in November/December from a Warsaw producer called 0311, but we don’t have any solid plans for 2012 yet. Production-wise, I’m hoping to write a lot more material and hopefully release a couple records on some international labels soon. I’m definitely going to explore some strange BPMs more, slow techno, superfast juke… we’ll see!