Sipping from a mug of mint tea in a near-silent east London cafe, Nottingham-born disco-pop firecracker Ronika all platinum blond hair, blood-red lips and ripped jeans is recalling the descriptions of her since she emerged in 2010. "I like 'Gwen Stefani as styled by George at Asda'," she says in a voice that rarely falls below "quite loud". "What I was trying to do is bring the glamour of the disco sound to the mundanity of my everyday life in Nottingham." As if to prove her point, she describes an early press shot as "me with roller skates on but with a walking stick going around an old people's home".
This refracting of everyday life through the escapist prism of pop is at the heart of Ronika's DIY approach (she runs her own label and creates her own videos). Inspired to start making electronic music at the age of 14 after watching her friend's dad, producer William Orbit, DJ at an all-night rave in Brixton, Ronika's teenage tastes took in funk, jazz, hip-hop and "just about everything really". Her genre indulgences took place at Nottingham's legendary but now closed record shop Selectadisc, the name of which also adorns her debut album. "It was a magical place and I just wanted a title for the album that meant something to me." This musical crate-digging also applies to the album itself, which slinks between effervescent synthpop bangers that Kylie would give her gold hotpants for, warm Moroder-esque epics, and delicious nods to disco that manage to avoid pastiche purely on the strength of their brilliance. "I was trying to draw on the stuff I loved but also the stuff I thought hadn't been overly rinsed; things like freestyle, boogie and Italo," she explains. "These are all major passions of mine."
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by Michael Cragg via Electronic music | The Guardian
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