from todays's Georgia Straight
A Dance-Music Producer Finds Her Voice
By martin turenne
Publish Date: 17-Feb-2005
DJ Rap
As the daughter of a wealthy hotelier, Charissa Salveno spent her childhood bouncing all over the world, variously residing in Indonesia, Malta, and most remarkably, Bhutan, where her father managed a hotel. Salveno (aka DJ Rap) still spends a lot of time on the road, touring the well-worn circuit of global dance-music hubs. Although the perks available to touring DJs nowadays don't compare to those she enjoyed as a child--or even to those offered during rave's heyday--Rap isn't complaining; she's got her fingers in too many pots to bother with such trifling matters.
Reached at her home in Los Angeles, the British expat is preoccupied, impatiently awaiting a call from her agent and generally acting like a woman with a lot more on her mind than a routine phone interview. When the discussion turns to her forthcoming solo album, though, Rap zooms in on the task at hand, speaking for several uninterrupted minutes about her love of singing, her difficulties in finding suitable collaborators, and her hopes for redefining pop music in the post-rave era. For someone best known as a drum 'n' bass DJ, the transition to traditional songwriting might seem jarring, but Rap sees it as a natural reflection of her restless self.
"I'm never just going in any one direction," she explains. "I like splitting myself up and going in three directions at once. So my plan is to keep putting out albums where I'm singing and expressing a different side of myself, and in between those, I'll still be putting out the more underground house and drum 'n' bass records that my fans expect to hear."
The producer's been rolling out singles since 1990, when she appeared on the hardcore scene with "Ambience: The Adored", a tune notable for its ghostly atmospheres and loosely syncopated rhythms. In '93, her "Spiritual Aura" became a staple of jungle's artcore movement, a strain that introduced a much-needed measure of sensuality to the scene at large.
As the decade progressed, Rap collaborated and played alongside the biggest names in drum 'n' bass, but by the end of the '90s, the form's unrelenting raucousness was starting to alienate her. Soon, she migrated to house and breaks and started working alongside genre giants like BT and Adam Freeland. With several house productions in the pipeline and work well under way on her aforementioned singing record, you get the feeling that the producer has abandoned d 'n' b for good, but she begs to differ.
"I never went completely off it, but at a certain point I just felt that all my creativity needed to go in other directions," says Rap, who will play a house-oriented set at Sonar on Friday (February 18). "I was on a roll in the '90s with drum 'n' bass; I had a lot of hits, but then all my ideas started going into other projects. You know what it's like? It's like having a husband. Sometimes you feel the need to cheat a little, so I cheated with house music and I flirted with breaks. But no matter what, I'll always have love for drum 'n' bass."