Eclair Fifi

Eclair Fifi is a Scottish DJ and visual artist whose work is as playful as it is studied. Starting out in the late ’90s in her home city of Edinburgh, playing on pirate radio stations and at raves, Eclair Fifi’s tastes were tough – techno splintered by rapid-fire bursts of gabber, hardcore and breaks, inspired by the pioneers of Detroit and Chicago as much as the ferocious appetite of the Scottishcrowd for harder, faster beats. Throughout the ’00s, though, her tastes diversified and her style became more intuitive: Italo disco and Latin freestyle smoothing off the ragged edges of electro, southern US rap and Top 40 R&B acapellas breathing new life into wonky electronica; a style developed during her years as a core DJ for LuckyMe, a crew of art school students and rap nerds who went from throwing parties in sweatbox basements to releasing albums on Warp Records and producing for Kanye West. As well as playing at and curating bi-monthly LuckyMe parties in Glasgow and Edinburgh, she illustrated many of the label’s physical releases – her illustrations sparkling with a signature, delicate wit.Through her DJing and visual work, Eclair Fifi helped LuckyMe present a new vision of club music to techno-devoted Scottish ravers and forge relationships with like-minded crews globally, such as Low End Theory in Los Angeles and Turbo Crunk in Montreal. Residencies have been vital to Eclair Fifi’s growth. In tandem with her work with LuckyMe, ÉclairFifi  also spent the ’00s as a resident DJ at Glasgow club night Ballers Social Club, Manchester’s Hoya:Hoya, and Paris Social Club, channel-hopping every few months to play with the likes of Piu, Piu, Teki Latex and Louise Chen.