Read on for some insights from Daniela La Luz in this exclusive interview.

1) Are you an early bird or a night owl?
Practically I became a night owl, but theoretically I am also an early bird – I love mornings, days, nights and evenings, but unfortunately the human body needs sleep, which I think is a pity. I tried a million times in the past to resist sleeping, but of course I lost the match, haha. At nights I can just cocoon very good and dive deep in what I am doing. The neighbours are sleeping, almost no cars on the streets, nobody calls, nobody rings the bell and this gives me the silence and focus I need to dive deep and don´t get distracted by other sounds. Working that way I have the biggest creative output.

But of course I also love being awake really early and observe and feed the birds from my balcony, it fills me with joy and their beauty and being makes me smile. I also really love morning fogg. Means, I should switch my night shifts more often to the day time. I´m working on it, haha.

2) What is your home city and what makes it special?
I feel like I don´t have a true home city, which is probably related to the fact, that due to my child/puber sickness I was very often in hospitals for weeks or months and I kind of disconnected from a specific home city + I am an inbetweener, of Poland and Germany. Although born and raised in Munich (south Germany), my mum and me were travelling regularly to Lublin, Poland, to visit my family; so I have a strong connection to there as well.

My partner is from Belgium and I like it there as well, it’s also a little bit of a home. Since seven years I am living in Berlin and I am a cosmopolitan, a travelling soul. I can find beauty in every place and mainly the beauty gets created by the beautiful people I meet and as simple as it sounds, by the birds and trees there.

But if you ask me so specific, let me tell you a little bit about Munich: most of the people in the world know Munich because of Oktoberfest, which I visited often with my friends in my teens and twens to have fun, but since I stopped drinking, haha – been there, done that. Def what you should try are the Brezles with butter and chives!

I left Munich quite some years ago, so I´m not completely up to date with everything, but I can tell about some classics. If you want to know what´s going on in the city like concerts, club nights and more, just grab a In-München mag laying in every cafe or shop or listen to M945 radio, featuring the more alternative scene there.

Munich has a snobby reputation, but of course there are special things to recommend, like the river Isar, coming from the alps. Icecold, clean water, floating constantly, never standing still. The river runs through the center of Munich and people love to hang out there after work, take a dip or just go there for a walk; and also the sound of the floating river, so powerful, I miss it sometimes. As most of the rivers in the world, it got straightened in the last decades, but the city understood how stupid that was and started a renaturing project, so it looks just beautiful and chased and endangered animals, like the beaver returned to the center of the city. When you’re really silent and chilled there in the evening at the shore, you can be lucky and observe one!

Not far from the east center is the LGBTQ area, located around Müllerstrasse, where you can find many cute bars, cafés, restaurants, indie cinemas and of course record shops! For example there´s Optimal, where I was used to buy records already in the 1990´s. Talking about the music scene, you can find places for every music genre and also band music is still very alife there. The legendary clubs from back in the days, like Ultraschall, Natraj Temple or Kraftwerk are long time gone, but there´s of course other venues, where electronic music is happening, like Rote Sonne, Blitz, Harry Klein or other places.

And there is also the Englischer Garten, a big park in the center of the city, as well with a small lake and a little river and one of the many Biergartens of Munich (strong part of the bavarian culture), under the Chinese Tower, where it´s just beautiful to have an ice cold bavarian beer in summer with your friends and afterwards have a dip in the small river Eisbach or ride your bike. Although Munich has this very conservative reputation, in a certain space around the Eisbach river (close to the metro station Universität, people are allowed to take a sunbath or dip into the river naked. It’s not for me, but I think it´s great that the ones that love doing it, have their freedom. Beside this all you can of course just have a lovely walk through there, or like i did in my teens: smoke a joint, hang out and jam with musicians at the Monopteros, get invited for an illegal party somewhere in the park or just have a picnic. But watch out with weed there; the bavarian state is super chilled with drunken people (too chilled imo), but very strict with joints and bavarian police is not for joking.

Beside chilling, there are of course also other special places, like for art lovers I can highly recommend the Pinakotheken, art from the medieval times until modern art and product design or also Haus Der Kunst, with modern expos and installations – there´s def something fascinating for everyone.

I can also highly recommend a Bauernstadl teatre, but if you don´t speak any german, you won’t understand anything, because yes, although they speak german, they speak it with a very strong dialect: oberbayrisch.

And you see, first I didn’t know what to tell and now you got me going, haha

And one more thing which is very special to me are the mountains of the alps, which you can reach in about 45/60 minutes by car and while driving you´ll see them impressively growing with every kilometre you come closer – what a view. If you’d ever go for a couple of days, I highly recommend you to go for a hike, the trails are for beginners or pros, or just rent a hut or stay in a mountain pasture. No matter if summer or winter, you´ll driven by the strong energy of the view. And Austria, Switzerland and Italy are close by!

3) Name three artists that have been inspiring you musically, lately?
I have hundreds of artists that inspire me, so it’s not easy to chose 3 and I just chose them randomly now, without a specific ranking. I’m listening to all kinds of music, mostly non-electronic stuff, to not get too much distracted from my own sound and visions.

I used to be a Björk fan already in the late 1990´s and since I’ve listened too much to her songs back then, I needed some years of break for my ears. Last week I was relistening to her first 3 albums again and yes, she’s still one of the biggest musicians alive, for me personally. Her newest album is also great and she keeps pushing the classical sounds with electronics in her own eclectic, unique way.

Second inspiring I found out last week about a band called Dagadana, from Poland and the Ukraine, uniting classic folklore, jazz and electronic sounds. I grew up with a love for folklore, so I´m always having an open ear about outstanding acts, bringing it musically to the point without sounding too old school, but also not too poppy.

I´m not always only into the music of an artist, but also into interesting biographies, which underline the sound of a character and that´s why as 3rd I´d like to mention Schwesta Ewa, who´s a female gangster rapper from Germany. She was born and raised in Poland, with criminal parents and moved to Germany as teenager. With 16 she started working as prostitute and when she turned 30 she stopped working in the active sex business and became a rapper. You can imagine that you must be a very strong person (especially as a woman with such a past) to be able to deal with all the negative, sexist comments and shit storms. Her sad, hard and tirelessly biography really impressed me and I like her two albums, really good rap/hiphop productions. She´s real in her lyrics and I like that naked honesty.

Ok and let me mention a 4th one, to break the rules and to strip electronic dance music – as DJ I really like the sets of Ben Ufo. Deep, pushing and still eclectic. And A Made Up Sound, also his productions as 2562, amazing! We invited him on one of our events this year and I should’ve played afterwards. Because of a water damage on the dance floor, unfortunately no other guests were allowed to come in, so A Made Up Sound was free to play absolutely whatever he wanted for the people left on the dancefloor and his set blew my mind. From house to techno, to dubstep, triphop – warm and wicked sounds. A set to remember!

4) What first comes to mind when you think of electronic music in Australia?
Def a lot of women! … like Trinity, Claire Morgan, Eluize, Magda Bytnerowicz, but also Dave Stuart, Nightime Drama, Something Else events and the record shop, Away Soundsystem! And I´m thinking of a lot of sunshine and the sea!

5) Tell us about your latest release?
My latest whole maxi this year was “Did You Ever – The Remixes“ – originally released in 2014 “Did You Ever” was an instant classic amongst discerning house heads, but it was when Detroit legend, Moodymann dropped it as closing track on his DJ Kicks compilation the year later. Then Housewax invited Virgo 4, Dana Ruh and Cinthie to remix the track and so they did, each in their own great, dancy way.

And yes, one very fresh record that just came out in october 2018 is a various artists compilation on About Blank Records (005), the label from the infamous About Blank Club in Berlin. My track on there has a very deep housy approach. Check it out!