Image via Complex Original
What do we know about Gina Turner? She's a dope-ass DJ, knocking out the best in a grip of house styles, especially the throwback bits that she slides into her sets. She's a vocalist as well as a producer, particularly known for her tech house. She's also married to Laidback Luke, and is expecting a child. Until the other day, we had no idea that Gina had an EP, Shake/Oscillator, out this week on Ones To Watch (which is a division of MixMash). It highlights both her harder sound, and her more minimal tastes, but overall, it BANGS. She's out on Holy Ship!!! right now, but before she set sail, she hit us with a grip of other things that we didn't know. Or maybe you didn't know. Either way, find out more about one of dance music's finest exports, in her own words.
I went to Emerson College to become a radio DJ! My major was audio production/radio broadcasting. Though I collected vinyl (that were tribal percussive house), I always thought I'd end up a straight on air host for rock music or something, it was never my intention to become a club DJ or an electronic music artist!
While I was at Emerson, since their performing arts school was so great, I wanted to reignite my love of dancing as well, I actually became a dance minor, studying ballet, jazz, and modern dance!
I would DJ. on the radio on our two stations WERS and WECB, spinning house mostly. I even won an award for "best show in 2005 on WECB" with my show "Suck my Deck with Gina Turner."
I'm really into athletics and holistic health. As you may know already, I have my yoga teacher certification. What you don't know is I think I might get this from my parents actually. Both my mother and father are chiropractors!
So that's where the holistic health factor comes in, and the athletics factor well. Both my mother and father were training in Olympic medicine before and after they got pregnant with me!
My mom even kept up on the weightlifting during (which explains a lot that during my pregnancy I'm non-stop wanting to DJ and do yoga).
I absolutely adore PUGS! They are my favorite dog / animal ever. Animals I'm afraid of are horses and snakes, keep those away! While were on the topic of animals, I don't eat them either! I'm a vegetarian!
I run and operate (with some help from my brother Eddie) my own record label, Turn It Records! We only have a few releases, but I'm really proud of them! We're in the process of setting up and expanding our merch store as well! You might recognize the model! ;)
Nouveau Yorican is a Latin tech house production (and sometimes DJ duo) that I do alongside of Laidback Luke! This happened in late 2008; we were really geeking out about music, and I began to play him some more outside-the-box/forward-thinking minimal and techno, which led him to want to pick my brain a bit to make music with me! How could I refuse!? Especially when he wanted to do a more underground sound I was really down!
I have been working on a very eclectic album (full of down-tempo beats, classic house, tech house, and even some industrial style hard hitting electro) which has now transformed into lots of smaller EPs. Hence my latest release on Ones To Watch. Normally what I do is quite on the side of tech-house, but what happened with this EP was I had a couple of really hard industrial-style tracks that were made for my album, so of course the first place I'd bring them to was MixMash/Ones To Watch being that it's "in the family," but don't worry, I'm not totally switching up my style, it's always been important for me as an artist to be versatile! So I wanted to do something harder, for the harder portions of my sets!
I absolutely love collaborating with other artists, there's some sort of magic there in the chemistry and the inspiration of working with other artists. In the past year alone I've been in the studio with Breach, Poupon, MK, Club Cheval, Surkin, Worthy, Junior Sanchez, and Costello, amongst many others! I've even done some vocal work for Eats Everything, Goldffinch, and Zombie Disco Squad.
As many of you may or may not know, this business sometimes takes AGES to release things, so don't go holding your breath waiting for stuff to come out!
I'm about to keep it really real for a second! One very personal thing going on in my life is this: I'm almost seven months pregnant and I'm finding myself in an uphill battle with weight gain, so I wanna talk about it! Being in the public eye while pregnant is so tough! It's like you have added pressure to look good any way but DJing while pregnant is a whole different ball game! You're going thru a very public transformation in front of everyone! But this gives me all the more reason and determination to bounce back to how I was before, if not better!!! So I'm gonna DJ until I'm 35 weeks pregnant, and then I'm only gonna take eight weeks off, and I'm planning to come back with a vengeance! Sorry I just had to get that out! Ladies, holler if you hear me!
My dream is to one day open a yoga studio of my own! It would be amazing to have that sort of thing! I could still DJ on the weekends and then teach yoga on the weekdays! Best of both worlds.
I don't drink alcohol at my gigs. Just on very very rare special occasions! Even on my rider it says "trip to Starbucks." However, I do drink espresso like a maniac. Before my pregnancy, this was my routine:
Wake up: One shot of espresso with protein drink before yoga/workout.
Mid-day: Starbucks iced tall soy latte with three shots
Night: I'll even have a shot of espresso after dinner!
