
Recognise 075: Jennifer Loveless
Standing in a DJ booth amidst a 6000-strong dancefloor, Jennifer Loveless is in her element. Mixing tracks that span multiple decades and styles, she bops along with her enraptured crowd, an effortless cool in her demeanour against the heat of Boiler Room’s Sydney 2023 edition. Acid-tinged synths give way to anthemic piano stabs; rowdy house tracks dip into ballroom reworks and percussive club edits – her deep, sultry selections demonstrate a style that’s earned her the nickname ‘The King Of Groove’ among friends and fans.
It’s an energy that Loveless has taken to clubs and festivals around the world over the past 12 months, and which manifests equally in her own productions: releases on labels like Planet Euphorique, Butter Sessions and !K7 evoke the allure of a perpetual summer, with effervescent melodies, full-bodied soundscapes and warm basslines swarming round her pumping house beats.
Speaking of eternal sunshine, when Loveless dials into her interview with DJ Mag, she does so from the thick of Australian summer, where she’s been seeking refuge from the bitter cold of her current base in Berlin. She’s just about recovered from Gooch Week, an infamous five-day Christmas-into-New-Year celebration that’s held across Perth’s beaches, boats and nightclubs. Having DJ’d every day of the festivities, she’s catching up on some much-needed R&R in Melbourne – or, Naarm – a city she called home for over a decade, and where her DJ career first took form.
Loveless travelled to Naarm from her hometown of Toronto as a 20-year-old in 2012, oblivious to the fact that her university exchange trip would ultimately culminate in an 11-year stay two years down the line. It was a string of early bookings there, and meeting her first girlfriend, that initially sealed her fate. “It was this whole experience where I finally began to feel like myself,” she remembers fondly. Upon returning to Canada to complete her degree, her top priority was to find a way back.
By the time she did, she’d started DJing around a few local spots in Toronto, but the city’s strict alcohol laws and noise restrictions somewhat tempered her dreams of playing much more than seven-hour bar gigs for $100. Melbourne, on the other hand, benefitted from the many innovative DIY collectives that made use of the city’s available spaces – Loveless was quickly won over by the city’s livewire energy and community-oriented scene. A fuse was lit, and her favourite hobby soon started to resemble a viable career path. “There were so many more avenues to go down if you wanted to play out,” she says, “and options to sustain yourself financially from it”.