Balance Selections 223: Olga Misty

Olga Misty first discovered her love for electronic music during her later school days. A simple passion naturally evolved into the foundations for her journey into DJ’ing from 2008. Olga prefers emotional and heart touching music, with the rich & colourful tones of deeper progressive house at the core of her mixes & style.

Since 2011 Olga has run her own successful radio show known as Ocean Planet, which has been broadcast to a loyal & constantly growing audience across the globe on Proton Radio and DI FM. For more than 10 years many talented guests have joined the show, including Dmitry Molosh, GMJ, Subandrio, Nishan Lee, DJ Ruby, Fonarev, Nopi, EANP,and many many more.

Recently, Olga come on board as a resident DJ for Meanwhile Recordings, the label from GMJ & Matter, showcasing the finest in deep and progressive music from around the world. These mixes are on regular rotation on Spotify as Proton’s curator DJ.

Olga has performed in many different countries such as her native Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Sri Lanka, Netherlands and Australia, at major events & venues such as ADE, Burning Man, Liquid Sounds, special events in Warpp club, Meanwhile launch party, Digital Emotions & many more, spreading her signature deep, emotive & driving sound.

Tracklisting:

01. Roam Freely – Personal Log
02. Navar – Return of the Sun
03. Dowden – Creating Constellations
04. Andre Moret – Ambit (Sebastian Sellares Remix)
05. Carsten Halm – Dark Light (Analog Jungs Remix)
06. AxeLara – Aglaia (Alex O’Rion Remix)
07. amháin, EMPHI – Hadron
08. Nōpi – My Prophet World
09. EDLands – Autumn Rain (Kenan Savrun Remix)
10. Mariano Mellino, Interaxxis – Andromeda (Main mix)
11. DJ Ruby – Apollo (Golan Zocher Remix)
12. Dowden – Capricorn
13. Ben Haydie – Bad Idea (EMPHI Remix)
14. NuFects – Wake Up (Gorkiz & Nobilis Remix)
15. Kostya Outta – Falcon (Original Mix)
16. Analog Jungs – Tadasana
17. Hot TuneiK – Consciousness feat. Osiris Heyerdahl (Anton MAKe Remix)
18. Darren Bray – Zodiac (DJ Ruby Remix)
19. Berni Turletti – Seychelles (Matter Remix)
20. Gadi Mitrani – Gone (Alex O’Rion remix)
21. Alex O’Rion – Echium (GMJ & Matter Remix)
22. Sebastian Sellares – Renaissance (Original Mix)
23. East Cafe – When Chaos Ends (Extended Mix)
24. D-Nox, K.A.L.I.L. – Mayahl (Original Mix)
25. Jiminy Hop, Reskide – Oceania feat. Ira Key (Dub Mix)

Balance Selections Q+A

Name: Olga Misty
Location: Moscow, Russia
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Alias/Producer name: Olga Misty
Labels affiliated with: Meanwhile Recordings, Digital Emotions

My last 3 releases:

Deep Fog ft. Olga Misty – Shattered Dreams

Deep Fog ft. Olga Misty – Shattered Dreams (Deep Chill Mix)

Rafa’EL feat. Olga Misty – Lucid Dreams

What music did you listen to as a child?

My first memories listening to music was from my mom’s tape recorder, mostly Russian pop music of the 90’s. The first cassette that I chose as a musical solo was La Bouche – Sweet Dreams. Gradually, I became a regular at local music stores, and my passion grew. Then my mother bought me my own two-cassette tape recorder and I recorded my favourite songs from FM radio and then compiled them together into 90-minute tapes so that they could be listened to in the player without rewinding.

When was the first time that you realised that you liked electronic music?

I got into underground music through Europa Plus radio station when my high school friend recommended that I listen to “real DJ music”. It was the Garage radio show on Friday nights. After several releases, the main event of each week for many years was the expectation of a new release. The radio show presented underground electronic music of different directions – house, tech house, progressive house, trance, techno, breaks. It was then that I realised that progressive house was my love at first sight. The presenter talked about the news in the music and club industry and invited eminent DJ’s to live. It’s funny, but two years ago, as a guest, I was invited to this live show myself.

When was the first time you saw a DJ in a club?

When I was a 1st year university student in the city of Yoshkar-Ola, I saw an ad that one of the resident DJs of my favourite radio show was performing in one of the two clubs in this city. My joy knew no bounds and I looked at this performance as magic. Since then, I gradually began to visit clubs more often and watch how the DJ works, hearing more amazing sounds. A community of like-minded people grew up around the radio show forum and we enthusiastically exchanged the names of labels, tracks and artists, and even identified ID’s in mixes in the days before Shazam :).

Which producers/artists/acts inspire you?

For a long time, I was inspired by my cat, but she passed away several years ago. She was there to experience the sounds with me. Early on I was struck by the magic of Sasha and John Digweed, and after that I discovered the work of Hernan Cattaneo. The list of musicians and DJs who have inspired me at different times is huge.
I sincerely admire GMJ and his great friend and collaborator Matter, who are doing absolutely incredible things in the studio and on the dance floor! Alex O’Rion, Nopi, Juan Deminicis, Subandrio, Jiminy Hop, Simos Tagias and many many more inspire and lift me through their music.

The support and love of my boyfriend gives me strength to not give up these not easy years, as well as the kind words and support of my listeners!

What was the last album that you downloaded/bought?

Now there is such a wide choice on the electronic music market, finding something special, close and authentic sounding is on the one hand not an easy task, but on the other hand, an incredibly rewarding one when something truly speaks to me! The openings for me of this year are EMPHI, Gorkiz and NuFects. One of my most favourite releases of this month is Amháin & EMPHI – Hadron (Subandrio Remix) on Vapour Recordings.

EMPHI – Parabol

What is your current production and DJ set up like?

My DJ setup is very simple: a laptop, headphones and a controller. Since my student days, I moved a lot and got used to listening to music mostly on headphones even in my studio. When I first started making my own mixes, I discovered Ableton Live and have been working with this program ever since. I also have a small but much-loved progressive house vinyl collection and I hope to play a vinyl set at a party someday.

What releases do you have on the horizon?

So I have many plans for collaborations. I even recorded a samples of my vocals for GMJ tune, and we will see where this will end up in the future. The next episode of my radioshow Ocean Planet will be very special because of my special guest who’s music I really love is EMPHI. Also planning to record a new special mix for Meanwhile Textures playlist on Spotify. And of course, new mix with favourite tunes of 2022 will be added on first days of 2023 to Year Mixes series.

Where can we hear you perform?

Now I have several projects on the radio – my show Ocean Planet on Proton radio and DI.FM every 2nd Friday and Saturday, as well as the show Solace on Frisky radio every 1st Wednesday. I also record many guest mixes for various podcasts and radio shows and curate a series of Spotify mixes hosted by Proton.

Unfortunately, it is not so easy to travel now, so this year I started playing more in my homeland in Russia. Legendary Russian DJ Vladimir Fonarev invited me to join him monthly Digital Emotions Night event series as a resident.

Tell us more about the podcast you made for Balance?

For this special mix, I’ve compiled my favourite tracks from the past few months and recorded mix in Ableton. I was trying to tell a kind of story like I usually do. A special place in this mix for fantastic track written by Navar – Return of the Sun. It’s forthcoming on Meanwhile Recordings very soon.

My Recommendations

The top track in my DJ wallet currently is:

Amháin & EMPHI – Hadron (Subandrio Remix)