DJ Miley Serious: “The only way is underground”

With almost a decade residency at Rinse FM, regular tours around the world and her own label, 99CTS RECORDS, if there’s one thing Miley Serious takes seriously it’s clubbing. She joins our call wearing a bright green fluffy hat, a silver necklace which reads LU2K (her husband’s stage name), and dripping with the kind of laid-back cool that only makes you want to lean in further.

Growing up in Montauban in the south of France, Serious first fell in love with DJing at 15. From there, she’s flown across the world, performing for Killekill in Berlin, The Lot Radio in New York and as a resident at Rex Club Paris. Despite her impeccable taste and musical upbringing, Serious prefers platforming other people’s music rather than producing her own. In the past few months, she’s released a vinyl through her record label and collaborated with Australian brand Perk and Mini for a motocross jersey, which she’s still buzzing about. Her first job was working in vintage, and her ’90s dress sense proves it: “I collect tracks and I collect stuff. You should see my place, it’s insane.” But her true passion is club music. When I bring up her brief stint in cheerleading, she laughs. “It was too bitchy for me,” she grins, “I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going back to the club’.” Nowadays, the french DJ splits her time between New York and Paris, where she plays games with her husband, watches cartoons and collects vintage fashion. 

Sitting down with HUNGER, Serious unpacks what it means to be a music archivist, how her record label is promoting other DJs and why she never wants to leave the underground.

Alongside vintage fashion collecting, you often refer to yourself as a music archivist. Why is archiving so important to you?

I’m a very romantic person when it comes to club music. Something becomes so precious to me when I know where it comes from, the history of it. I want to talk about the emotions of the genre more than the genre itself. 

What do you want people to take away from your sets?

I want to tell a story. Everyone wants to tell a story. It’s part of being a DJ. Right now, we fight a lot more to have that back. It’s crazy to have to beg for the crowd to be open-minded. 

Both of your main genres, Punk and DIY, are incredibly political. Do you see activism as having any space in the club?

The club is a space where everybody can be free on the dancefloor. It’s a precious place. I’ve been going to the club since I was 15, and I always felt protected there, like I could be myself. It’s a community that hears you, it doesn’t judge you and things need to stay this way. 

Has it changed a lot?

I think the new generation didn’t grow up the same way in these places. The politics of those places changed and unfortunately lost their values.  

If we track back to when you were a teenager, clubbing in the south of France, when did you fall in love with nightlife?

This is how I met my best friend who is also a brother to me. We met and started this journey together. I was protected by a community and I was so welcomed as a woman. The club back then was wild. We could have burned the place and rebuilt it.

Where did your stage name, Miley Serious, come from?

I started to DJ when I was around 16 and it was a period online — witch house — where everybody had a name related to pop music. Unfortunately, I don’t care about Miley Cyrus. 

You’ve been performing across France and the US. How do Paris and New York differ sonically?

The crowd is different. The way you read these things is different. I love Chicago, I love Detroit, I love New York and the music I love comes from there, so the way people relate and give you energy is so different, so open-minded. 

Paris is so different. It’s here that I can bridge the gap. I can bring all the US music I listen to and play here. The UK is always so fun. It’s always a place that I really love to be, especially Manchester.

How does your label, 99CTS RECORDS, let you give a platform to underground producers?

It’s what makes me get up most of the time and be so proud of the work I do. To constantly promote people, recognise them and make them feel good about what they do is the most important. I will never forget the feeling when they asked me to be a resident on such a big radio as Rinse, and I could finally give a platform to people that dream about it. It’s such a fascinating world to be in the underground since day one. The mainstream needs the underground. 

Next year, you’ll be coming up on a decade with Rinse FM. How do you see the next 10 years going?

It’s funny you ask right now, because it’s a moment where I’m thinking about it a lot. Things cannot be the same all the time, the scene is changing and music is changing. How to do better for the scene? That’s my goal for the next 10 years.

Do you have any exciting things coming out soon?

In May, I’m going to put out a dark ambience project, Magnifique, from a genre that I absolutely love called dungeon synth. It’s very D&D but it also comes from a deeper scene that I’ve really loved for more than a decade. There is a label in Miami called XUM, who do small video games and I asked them to do a video that follows the path of ‘Lone Swordsman’. We also have a zine social from Cedric Elmerich and this March, I have another release coming out. 

Could you explain what ‘digging’ is and how to get started?

It’s like waking up and some people read the newspaper: you wake up and you see what was out yesterday or what is new. For me, ‘digging’ is such an automatic way to research.

I feel like it’s important to nerd out in general, whether that’s documentaries or movies or music. You write down something, you learn about it and then, everything goes so fast. Soundcloud and Vinted are my most opened apps. I’m a SoundCloud girl till I die. YouTube is good for that, channels like Majestic Casual or Music Place. You have to work to dig.

Once you’ve done all that work, how do you know when you’ve aced a set?

Really good ones aren’t always happening, but when they do, as you play, you have tears in your eyes because it feels so good. It’s a moment where everything fits perfectly.

With artists like Charlie xcx and Harry Style’s upcoming album, do you feel like electro and club music is becoming more mainstream? 

It’s funny because there’s mainstream, and then there’s mainstream for the scene. Not a single person is born with an underground reference right away. So your first references are always big artists who show you the way. 

Who was that for you?

My first love was Oasis. Then, when I opened a book about Oasis, I learnt so much, I dug and discovered the people they considered to be underground. 

I have a sticker on my music system that I have had since I was young. And it says ‘The only way is underground’. And I always stick to that.