Magda (US)

Like the rest of her colleagues at Minus and within the trio Run Stop Restore, Magda has led a peripatetic life—born in Poland, then living in Texas, Detroit, Windsor and New York, before finally settling in Berlin—which might help explain her restless and utterly uncomplacent approach to production and DJing. Since the turn of the millennium, her role as Richie Hawtin's trusted accomplice and opening act of choice has helped her to build a rabid fan base around the world; her Final Scratch-based DJ sets are notable not only for their precision and crowd-moving savvy, but particularly for her facility with the possibilities of digital DJing, allowing her to remix favorite tracks on the fly, and to flesh out her sets with skeletal loops and unreleased tracks by herself and her friends. Whereas so many artists on the European circuit choose to follow an all-hits-all-the-time path, Magda's sets are distinguished by their oddly déjà vu qualities, giving life to cuts you could swear you'd heard before, except you know you haven't. It's simply the sound of minds melding.