After sending in a mixed tape and persistently turning up at the club, DJ Heaven was finally given a chance to spin at the male-dominated dance institution of Ministry of Sound in London. It was 1996 and you could pretty much count the number of female club DJs in Britain on two hands, if that (three of them were specifically drum-n-bass jocks: Rap, Kemistry and Storm). After dropping her pumped-up progressive set on the superclub’s top-of-the-line sound system, Heaven was promptly offered a high-profile Friday night residency to showcase her energetic sound. At the time, Ministry was the nucleus of Britain’s dance culture. A loyal following allowed DJ Heaven’s tenure as a resident to continue for three consecutive years until she decided to move on and concentrate on spinning worldwide.

In Australia, where she recently stayed for 18 months, Heaven is billed as “the world’s No. 1 female DJ.” In America we have Sandra Collins and pockets of regional femme mixmasters like Sol (Los Angeles), DJ Heather and Colette (Chicago), DJ Emily (New York), Sage (San Francisco), Baby Anne (Florida) and more. Currently in the U.K., names like Lisa Lashes, Lottie, Ann Savage, Sister Bliss and Lisa Loud grace Top 100 DJ lists. But really, the issue of equal parts male to female in the DJ equation has been slow to change. Just ask Heaven, who has basically been there from the start without any female role models to help her out. Today, she reigns as a well-respected world-class DJ with an unpretentious air of being in total control as she shows a mastery of the turntables matched by few.

Heaven’s fresh, hard-hitting sets rarely fall into a category and she’s the first to admit that it all begins with one of her favorite pastimes – shopping. “If I’m looking in a record shop going through a ton of records, I look for a really good clear kick drum with a good etch on it. It’s so simple … well it’s not simple to do in the studio, but I think it’s an element that you’ve got to get right to have a really good sound in your sets – one that doesn’t clash with any of the other elements in a tune. I also love my bass lines – not in a drum-n-bass-garage type way, but in one that produces a really strong sound. I also listen for a good hat rhythm. Obviously, there is a lot more going on in progressive tracks then there is in techno, but if you get those three elements – the bass, the kick and a hat rhythm – you can do so much without having to add too much more. I play some vocal stuff, but I don’t play a vocal-driven set. I’ll play vocals more towards the end of my set or if it’s got some kind of fatal message like some of the old Deep Dish stuff or even some of the drum-n-bass tracks remixed into a house sound. But generally my set is instrumental.” And if you’ve experienced her sets, you know they are not for the faint hearted.

Clare Ratcliffe (aka Heaven) began her adult life as a shop proprietor who would eventually model because of her good looks. “I used to go to the rave parties in 1989 and 1990,” she explains, while readily admitting that it was quite unusual for woman to DJ then. “It still is, but it was more so in the early ’90s.” Her future career unknowingly began when she bought a turntable to plug into her home hi-fi system – simply “to play around” with vinyl. Then she bought another turntable and started practicing. “I got a couple of small gigs like playing a warm-up set, and just gradually built up from there. People would hear me playing and I would get offered better gigs. Then in 1994 I went to Ibiza for the whole summer and lots of promoters heard me play. So when I got back to England, I got a lot of work. Then I decided to move to London [from Birmingham] and became a resident DJ at Ministry of Sound. That was a great boost, because of the profile obviously. It’s been a long, slow process, but obviously I’ve had quite some good breaks, so it’s worked out quite well really.”

Has her gender helped or hindered her success as a serious DJ? “There is the point of view that if you are making special allowances for women then you are almost succumbing to the whole sexism issue, because you’re saying there is a difference. But I think it should be supported. Someone who did an interview the other week actually said, ‘Do you think that some people assume that you are eye candy for the crowd?’ And to be honest I thought that put the crowd down more than anything because surely if they paid their money to get in, they want more than something to look at. To me, it’s still a man’s world, but it’s slowly changing.”

– Kim Taylor