Lisbon’s Inés Coutinho aka Violet is one of the main faces of Lisbon’s blossoming underground music scene, co-running a queer event series called mina and local internet radio station Rádio Quântica.
After starting out as a DJ in shops, pubs and hotels — a time she values greatly —, she briefly lived in London for a while, and around the time she returned to Lisbon her career took off.
Not in the slightest due to her impeccable label Naive, which has been turning heads for its boundless approach and string of strong releases by often upcoming and mostly female artists like Octo Octa, Almaty, Ilana Bryne and Eris Drew, and on which she also released her own ‘Togetherness’ EP. Her mixing approach is a captivating concoction of breakbeat, bass, techno and basically everything else — not eschewing an occasional Cardi B or RnB from the 00’s weaved into her sets.
This Selectors Podcast reflects her engagement with her local scene and its upcoming artists: “This mix is like being surrounded by friends and inspirations from my local scene. Most of its tracks are quite recent and made by young artists whose relentlessly imaginative output has been capturing my imagination”, like BLEID, Stasya and Odete, as well as more established artists from her scene like Photonz and Príncipe’s Marfox. The result is a 70-minute rollercoaster of drums, rhythms and surprises, full of different sounds and influences. According to Coutinho herself, that’s “what [she] feels makes it special, rather than having a specific geographically-pinnable sound.”