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Suzanne Kirchmayr and Electric Indigo are one and the same: musician, composer, DJ, feminist. An emblematic figure on the Austrian techno scene, Electric Indigo has been playing her music at festivals and clubs around the world for over 30 years.
If Suzanne Kirchmayr, aka Electric Indigo, is a veteran of the Austrian electro scene today, it's because she began her DJ career in Vienna, where she was born on December 15, 1965. As a teenager, she was fascinated by hip hop, funk and jazz. In the early 1980s, she was swept along by the techno vibe, listening to pioneering DJs such as Jeff Mills, DJ Rush and Mike Banks.
From Vienna to Berlin: behind the decks
In 1989 - at the age of 24 - Susanne Kirchmayr began mixing in the bars of her hometown. The young woman was the first to play techno in Viennese clubs, democratizing access to a music that was still little known in the Austria of the early 1990s. Then it's off to Berlin, a city in turmoil after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the irreverent German capital, Suzanne mixed and deepened her techno, rock, indie and electro culture at the legendary Hard Wax record store, where she worked from 1993 to 1996. At the time, Berlin was a hive of underground activity, attracting musicians and DJs from all over the world. Suzanne Kyrchmair established herself as one of the pioneering female DJs of electronic music.
Too few women visible on the electro scene
The young DJ was soon struck by how few women were active on the electronic music scene. Indeed, she soon tired of hearing, whenever she performed, how rare it was to see a woman behind the decks. In 1998, at the start of the Internet era, she founded an international network to support female artists in the fields of electronic music and digital arts. Its name has all the makings of a manifesto: female : pressurefemale pressure. A nod to sexism. International, female:pressure offers a huge database designed to give greater visibility to female artists, as well as transgender, intersex, genderqueer, a-gender, non-binary... The network brings together over 2,000 DJs, composers and producers from nearly 80 countries.
Before going solo under the moniker Electric Indigo (her favorite color), Suzanne teamed up with other DJs on large-scale techno projects, which she produced herself: these included "Northstar" with three other Austrian artists in 1993, "Loisaida Sisters" the following year, and "VLP" in 2011. In 2003, resolutely independent, she founded her own label: Indigo:inc.
The crème de la crème of festivals
Electric Ingido's compositions are premiered at some of the world's most adventurous and avant-garde electro festivals: Wien Modern, CTM, Heroines of Sound... the crème de la crème! But Electric Indigo knows how to leave the electro happy few behind and mix the night away at the Berghain. In a career spanning over thirty years, Susanne has criss-crossed the clubs and festivals of 45 countries. The musician composes for clubs, sound installations, plays and even short films.
Exhibitronic Festival, DJ set in Strasbourg on September 4, 2020
Institutional recognition...
Electric Indigo has been honored with numerous awards, including an honorable mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2009. In 2013, she was awarded a national composition grant from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture.
This is the year of Abstrial, a radically contemporary opera by Paola Bianchi, Ivan Fantini, Pia Palme and Electric Indigo:
...but eternal bad girl!
His latest, resolutely experimental album was released in 2018, and is called 5 1 1 5 9 3, released on the "Imbalance Computer Music" label. Metallic objects and human voices intermingle throughout the tracks, to tell a true sonic story, not devoid of shadowy areas...
With 32 albums to her credit, Electric-Susanne Indigo-Kyrchmair, a rare artist who stands for the values of electronic music and open-mindedness, is not about to stop building bridges between techno and other music, as long as they are conceptual and daring.
Suzanne Gervais
