'I’m in a pretty happy place right now' - DJ Bus Replacement Service Interview

‘What better way to warm up for the weekend than with raw cuts about GDPR, abortions, underage love, a portmanteau of dubstep & mattresses etc etc???’

The above is a Tweet from DJ Bus Replacement Service prior to her Rye Wax gig back in May, and it’s a statement which fully reflects her unhinged approach to track selection, mixing and general presence behind the decks. The fact that she dons a bloated looking Kim Un Jong mask is unsettling enough but combined with her collection of tunes covering gabber, hardcore, techno and literally anything else which has roots in such genres, a set with DJ BRS is the definition of an unpredictable and almost unsettling experience.

During the week she’s Doris Woo aka Data Protection Lawyer but during the weekends, she can be found playing at the likes of Bangface, Freerotation and plenty other festivals and clubs as DJ Bus Replacement Service. Balancing a somewhat chaotic schedule, Woo has managed to successfully create a name for herself and is currently making a mark on electronic scene and further afield with shows in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin and Krakow.

We wanted to know more about the woman behind the mask and who really is DJ BRS so we had an in-depth chat with her ahead of her next gig at the The Quietus' Birthday Rave in September...

What have you been up to over the last few months?

A hell of a lot! I’ll run through a few highlights: I confused a lot of people with my DJ sets for House of God’s 25th birthday concert with BMB, Giant Swan, and drag artists Elliott Barnicle and Nora Virus. Then played my first U.S gig as DJ BRS in San Francisco for The Stud’s 52nd birthday (and shared a dressing room with a gaggle of drag queens who were on before me, yay!), and survived another Freerotation set and debuted the new B2B project Little Baby Cheeses with my husband. Gigs and radio/mix requests have really ramped up this year, and I’m soaking it all in.

We’d like to know more about your Kim Jong Un mask, particularly at time when such a character is in the headlines on a daily basis. Why did you choose Mr. Kim as the face of DJ Bus Replacement Service?

Before I bought the mask 3 years ago, I DJ'd in other costumes and disguises (because it’s more fun for me to take on another character, even if it results in visually-impaired DJing) but when I saw the supreme leader mask it instantly spoke to me. Unless a gig I’m playing at is boiling hot, I round out the outfit with a Mao jacket and pin.

I’m sure you can read multiple meanings into the mask, but the one I’ll go with is that it’s an homage to the significance of weird Korean music in my DJ DNA. It was such a revelation when I first heard E Pak Sa’s pon-chak around 15 years ago on my favourite radio station WFMU. The second major revelation happened through hearing North Korean pop songs by the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble (or ‘PEE’ if you’re down with the kids) and various affiliated singers. What both have in common is their niche take on popular music with varying levels of obscurity and head-scratching. Then I take this music and turn it on its head again by presenting it in a more conventional dance music environment.

Do you think it’s easy to fall into a trap of taking electronic music too seriously? There can be an air of pretentiousness on the dancefloor at certain events, why do you think this is?

I have no idea, but I think it’s perfectly acceptable that some areas of electronic music should be taken seriously—it doesn’t need be mutually exclusive from feeling a strong emotion listening or dancing to it. I remember when 80s synthpop and new wave was on the ascendency, their legitimacy was questioned against that of rock music (especially in the US), with the argument that the latter was played on so-called ‘real’ instruments. But then again, I have met people at parties who this question refers to and if I can’t have a laugh with them in some other way, I would give them a wide berth.

Regarding your second question, I don’t go out enough to really be bothered about what makes a dancefloor seem pretentious. I might hazard a guess that you have somewhere like Berghain in mind, but even there I enjoyed the last couple of times I went: queueing in freezing cold outside with a large spinach quiche for Noncompliant who was playing inside, and then raving with the quiche before tossing it into the DJ booth for her.

When I go to a party as a punter, I find it easier to do my own thing on the dancefloor and get lost in the music rather than mixing with the crowd. So I’m fine with whatever way people want to feel about music because there’s no invasion of my ability to have a good time. But what really gets my goat is people who gatecrash dressing rooms or DJ-only toilets to do their lines; there should be special place in hell reserved for them.

We've seen a few independent labels and collectives expanding throughout London and the U.K in the last year, have any particular imprints caught your attention recently?

Having played for collectives like Room 4 Resistance and Inner U has helped me discover DJs and networks that I’m happy to be affiliated with and support, especially in the UK where the dance music scene isn’t respected in the same way as in continental Europe. At the Inner U party I played at, Nkisi DJ'd before me and hearing her set blending hardcore with dark and light beats was amazing! Hardcore/gabber is at the root of my love for dance music and I guess that it’s the same for her, and I enjoy weaving it in a way that works with the momentum of the mix. She’s got her own collective called NON Worldwide that I’m keen to dig deep into…there are subtle sonic and aesthetic parallels with Downwards that I find quite interesting.

Little Baby Cheeses is a collaborative project between yourself and husband Anthony, who also plays under his own alias as Surgeon. What’s the sound of Little Baby Cheeses? Would you like Little Baby Cheeses to take over your separate monikers of DJ Bus Replacement Service and Surgeon one day?

Little Baby Cheeses is an excuse for both us to play incorrect music that we wouldn’t play in our club sets, for example hippy soundtracks, cod reggae, and children’s homemade cassettes. We had our world premiere in the yurt at Freerotation, and because the yurt caters to anything that isn’t four-to-the-floor dance music, we had more ways to mess with people’s perceptions of what we would bring.

I wouldn’t mind living in a world where demand for Little Baby Cheeses is higher than DJ BRS and Surgeon. Judging by the reaction from the yurt crowd to one of the tracks I played, I imagine there would be lots of ayahuasca involved.

We’re intrigued about your full-time day job as a data protection lawyer, it’s quite far off from the parallel universe of DJ BRS. Would you like the two worlds to collide? What do your colleagues think of DJ Bus Replacement Service’s sound and schedule outside the office?

I’ve done data protection consultancy work for several clients that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t known them through my DJing! That said, most of my legal work is not music-related, but what both my law and DJ work have in common is my approach to the work as a relative newcomer: keep the work varied, do it as often as possible, and don’t let people who book you take the piss with what you’re worth.

My efforts to make the two worlds collide have had mixed results: there was a call from the Law Society Gazette for lawyers who are also musicians, but I think my submission was too hot for them to handle - I have no idea why they would be put off by someone who dresses up a Kim Jong-Un and plays gabber. Ultimately, I think the Gazette took more of a shine to lawyers who could rock out Status Quo covers.

Unless someone from work has come to my gigs (which has happened) or gone to any parties in the range of Planet Fun and Thunderdome, it’s hard to convey to someone what I do as a DJ. But I take my day job seriously so that my colleagues look at my DJing as a positive thing and not a distraction from being a good lawyer. I know of several fairly high-profile lawyer/DJs such as Judge Jules and Norman Nodge, and it would be interesting to compare career notes with them.

How do you manage such an intense routine?

I switched to working freelance a few months ago and it has been the best thing that has happened to my work-life balance so far. I can now practice law and DJ without dampening my ambitions with either, and my yoga practice and home life keeps me grounded and not burn out. I’m in a pretty happy place right now and obviously want to keep that going for as long as possible.

However, I wouldn’t regard my life as any more intense than friends of mine who also produce and DJ and still have day jobs, nor after watching Drag Race Thailand, where the top 3 finalists also held down day jobs as a shrimp farmer, a coffin manufacturer and providing government-run music education programmes to schools in addition to doing their weekly/daily drag shows.

What plans have you got for the rest of the year?

I’m spending this month recording a bunch of mixes and doing interviews, and then from September there will be 5 weekends in a row of gigs and festivals before a week ‘off’ with my yoga teacher at her annual workshop in Berlin.

On the ‘About’ section of your artist FB page, your Personal Info is a quote from Lemmy stating: 'Music should offend people. Why shouldn’t people be offended?'. Leave us with two tracks which epitomise this statement.

This is the hardest question in this interview; I had to whittle this down from a solid 6:

L’il Markie – Diary of an Unborn Child

Steven Seagal feat. Lady Saw – Strut

Young Rick – Over The Rainbow

DJ Bus Replacement Service joins Perc, Manni Dee, British Murder Boys and more on September 7th in Corsica Studios to mark 10 years of The Quietus and general oddball electronic music. Tickets available here.

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