The Blessed Madonna: 'Rave degenerates saved my life'

23 September, 2024. Packing day.

Marea Stamper, aka DJ extraordinaire The Blessed Madonna, is cramming her belongings into well-worn suitcases, up of a forthcoming Australian tour.

There’s nary stress. She’s done this thousands of times before, playing everyplace from Berlin’s legendary nightclub Berghain to the Coachella Festival, wherever she headlined the Mojave signifier successful 2022.

Sipping connected an iced java (“if I could person this intravenously, I would”), Stamper is upbeat and warring fit, contempt a caller enactment successful hospital.

“I've been struggling with persistent anaemia for immoderate time, and they yet decided to fig retired why, truthful I had immoderate outpatient country past week,” she explains.

“They truly fixed maine up. Otherwise, I would person died connected this adjacent tour.”

It’s nary exaggeration to accidental that would person been a immense loss.

Stamper is 1 of the astir celebrated DJs of her generation, spreading the gospel of creation euphony done her uplifting festival sets, portion consistently breaking solid ceilings (in 2016, she became the archetypal pistillate to beryllium named DJ of the twelvemonth by Mixmag).

Her Australian circuit marks the fulfilment of a promise. Her past travel Down Under was chopped abbreviated by Covid-19.

“I sprinted retired of a edifice country to get onto a formation and travel home,” she says, recalling some her last-minute panic, and the astonishment of a heavily-discounted archetypal people summons connected an bare plane.

With nightclubs unopen down, she spent the pandemic remixing Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia medium successful her pyjamas; past scored a astonishment deed erstwhile Fred Again sampled 1 of their conversations connected his opus (Marea) We Lost Dancing.

“We’ve mislaid hugs with friends and radical that we love,” Stamper says implicit the track’s bubbling synths.

“If I tin unrecorded done this adjacent six months, time by day, what comes adjacent volition beryllium marvellous.”

Serendipitously, the opus helped Stamper unafraid a grounds woody with Warner Records. This Friday, she releases a star-studded debut album, Godspeed, which features Kylie Minogue, Joy Crookes and Jamie Principle.

It’s just to accidental it's been a agelong clip coming.

Stamper was calved successful 1977 and grew up successful agrarian Kentucky, the archetypal procreation of her household to unrecorded extracurricular of the Appalachian mountains.

Her begetter was the well-regarded blues instrumentalist Mike Stamper, and her mum, Louise Renee, was a librarian – but with small wealth coming into the household, Stamper was a precocious schoolhouse outcast.

She erstwhile got detention for failing to amusement up with luncheon money, and her quality – “butch” attire, with her hairsbreadth dyed purple and piled into a beehive – made her a people for bullies.

“I would get the crap kicked retired of maine each day,” she recalls, “so I was not peculiarly funny successful going to school.”

Salvation came from (where else?) an occurrence of Beverly Hills 90210, wherever the formed visited a rave. Inspired, Stamper snuck into her archetypal location enactment astatine the property of 14, and recovered her existent calling.

“They had to peel maine disconnected the speakers,” she aboriginal recalled.

But her begetter was furious. A dense drinker, helium was successful the mediate of a seven-year agelong of sobriety and “aggressively wanted maine to follow the values of immoderate rehab programme helium was in,” Stamper recalls.

“He conscionable said, ‘You can’t spell to raves, you’re excessively young. All these people, you deliberation they’re going to beryllium your buddies, and you deliberation they’re going to beryllium determination for you – but they won’t.'"

Looking back, she’s blessed to corroborate helium was wrong.

“When my dad’s woman died a mates of years back, it was those rave degenerates who were determination for me,” she says.

“They stuck with maine and they fed maine and enactment maine backmost together. Our enslaved is deep, spiritual, forever.”

She’s known immoderate of them since she dropped retired of schoolhouse aged 16 to merchantability mixtapes retired of the backmost of her car crossed the American Midwest.

Others helped her unafraid her archetypal DJ sets successful Chicago, initially arsenic Lady Foursquare, past The Black Madonna.

Under that moniker, she started releasing euphony successful 2012, gaining wide acclaim for tracks similar Exodus and the mountainous location anthem He Is The Voice I Hear.

By 2017, she had a 13-week, sold retired residency astatine London’s XOYO club, and her ain vigor presumption successful the video crippled Grand Theft Auto V.

Work connected her medium started astir the aforesaid time. Stamper confesses it’s been scrapped and rewritten respective times.

But 1 way has survived each incarnation: We Still Believe, a tribute to sweat-soaked warehouse raves that she wrote successful her attic much than a decennary ago.

“The archetypal mentation has my small dependable recorded connected a BlackBerry, to springiness you a consciousness of however agelong agone it was."

Before she could see it connected the album, she had to reclaim the rights from the autarkic statement who'd primitively released it successful 2013.

“They’d fixed maine a truly outstanding woody of, you know, ‘We're going to power this successful perpetuity for $300' oregon whatever,” Stamper says, "but, astatine the time, I was conscionable excited that anyone wanted to enactment my euphony out."

After buying it back, she enlisted 1 of her heroes, Jamie Principle, to re-record the vocals - a emotion missive to the unifying powerfulness of creation music.

Principle, whose 1984 anthem Your Love is crushed zero for Chicago house, besides appears successful a spoken-word interlude connected the album, describing however the country “went each to hellhole erstwhile the wealth came into it”.

Over the years, determination person been accusations of unpaid royalties and ripped disconnected songs. Stamper is disgusted.

“The guys who made these foundational records can't get aesculapian care,” she says.

“They person to person fundraisers to get a car fixed. Jamie Principle ne'er made a dollar from immoderate of his records.”

The interaction of wealth connected euphony is simply a taxable she hammers connected the medium which opens, pointedly, with a Quincy Jones quote.

“God walks retired of the country erstwhile you’re reasoning astir money.”

“That’s not an anti-money stance,” Stamper explains. “But you can’t spell into the workplace and effort to marque a grounds that you deliberation is going to person a fiscal interaction connected you later.”

In a twelvemonth wherever production-line projects from Katy Perry and Jennifer Lopez person failed to connect, she believes the charts are connected the cusp of a “Nirvana moment”, wherever the aged defender are swept distant by new, authentic voices.

“There’s been a play of cheerleading for nothing,” she says, “a benignant of bittersweet populism that isn't adjacent astir what's populist.

“And abruptly there’s each this unthinkable popular euphony coming out, you know? Charli XCX and Chappell Roan, who person idiosyncratic investment, idiosyncratic storytelling, idiosyncratic hazard successful their music.

“I deliberation Brat is simply a genre-resetting infinitesimal successful popular music.”

That’s wherefore her medium avoids the bland platitudes of astir superstar DJ projects. You tin perceive Stamper’s roots, her idiosyncratic struggles, and adjacent her spiritual religion woven into the heart-pounding beats.

On the rubric track, she pays affectional tribute to the radical she’s loved and lost, from Chicago underground fable Jojo Baby to the trailblazing pistillate DJ Kelli Hand.

“Hand to God, I wrote those lyrics, wholly asleep, connected a notepad connected tour,” she says, “and I wholly forgot astir them until we were 2 days distant from handing the medium in.”

Knowing she wanted to honour her heroes, á la Daft Punk’s Teachers, she flicked done her telephone 'til she re-discovered that late-night stream-of-consciousness.

“And connected the precise past day, astatine the precise past hour, it became the rubric way for the album,” Stamper says.

“And I curse to God, what time was it? Quincy Jones's birthday!

“Sometimes erstwhile you're making art, God conscionable winks astatine you.”