Mira Mark talks about putting Ladies First in Drum and Bass, her CD collection, her origins and getting back into DJing after cancer
Mira Mark still has a CD player in her car. It’s not particularly unusual, but it is still rare in the age of bluetooth and streaming. What sets Mira apart however, is that she still listens to CDs. “Nowadays I’m listening through all of the old CDs,” she says, sitting across from me at Jaeger.
She mentions compilations like Goliath, Summer parade and Club Zone that dot her catalogue, things that would have been new in the late 90’s and early 00’s. That was a fertile time for DJ mix compilations with the likes of Global Underground, DJ Kicks and Back to Mine at the forefront, with every major label then jumping on the band wagon with their own DJ compilations.
There are so many treasures there;” says Mira and “some tracks that even work now!”
Mira Mark is a busy DJ in Oslo’s extended club scene. Whether playing Drum and Bass under her eponymous alias, opening up for the likes of Chase and Status or touching those deep, dark regions of Techno as BECH, her range is extensive. She’s even been known to straddle the deeper trenches of House and melodic Techno, warming up for Ferry Corsten. Her sonic purview seems endless.
She always carries a book with her; a little black book with names of labels, artists and tracks she’s found and will explore further. “I try to follow up on the newest releases, almost every day,” she says, flicking through its pages to get to her most recent discoveries.
Mira is almost always in a deficit when it comes to her favourite labels’ release schedule and she is only up to October 2025 at the moment, but everyday, new music still takes up time and money…. “I’m a geek, I spent so much on music,” she says with a laugh.
She has always been a collector of music. ”I enjoy everything” she says about her collecting habits and from the most recent releases to those earliest CDs it consumes most of her free time. It started very early for Mira with one of her “best” and earliest memories; “My dad sitting on the floor in front of the speakers at home playing Leftfield’s Afrika Shox.” She “still gets goosebumps” evoking that image. “I just stumbled into the living room, wondering what the heck he was doing, playing that loud music. He also many times just sat in front of the amplifier, with headphones on.”
A couple of years ago her father confessed to being a DJ too in his youth, explaining something of Mira’s own love for music. “He’s such a geek, like me, and still is to this day. Father and daughter are very much alike.”
Mira grew up in a “small village outside of Sandefjord ”. With little else to do, “I was just in my world” and “always into music,” she reminisces. It was only when she moved to Oslo at 18 that her curiosities grew beyond her own world. Oslo’s club scene had opened a door to a new universe and she started “arranging parties, taking pictures or just being in clubs.”
She’d “never had guts to start mixing,” but she was surrounded by the equipment and the people. It was in 2012 when an “ex-boyfriend pushed her into it”. “That was when Skrillex was really popular,”she says with a grimace. Although Techno was her “first love,” Mira had the foresight to understand that Techno’s DJ scene was already saturated, and picked a thread leading to Dubstep instead. She was “intrigued by the energy,” but it only ended up being the springboard to something else, something even more intense.
“That’s when I stumbled across Drum and Bass and that was it!” DJing was her introduction to the genre, but she was quickly enamoured. At first she would lean into the more “commercial sound” of Drum and Bass which “was more accessible at that point”. The likes of “Graphix, Fred V and Camo and Krooked,” would draw into a rabbit hole where it was eventually “Break” that would define her tastes. “Break was the artist that introduced me to the deeper and darker sound.”
She sent her first Drum and Bass mix to Norwegian Drum and Bass legend Anwar. It culminated in her first DJ set at his night Room 101 and ever since Mira Mark’s name has been synonymous with Drum and Bass in Oslo and Norway. Today she hosts her own parties like Ladies First; she plays often at events like Bigup; and she’s part of the Norgbass collective.
Mira likes to “blend everything” when it comes to Drum and Bass, but she’s particularly “a fan of rollers”, a breakbeat and a bassline that doesn’t let go. She “wants to create dynamics, a roller coaster” with sets that go from Drum and Bass to Jungle. “I always try to have one Jungle track, one jump up track and one Norwegian track,” she explains, particularly emphasising the latter. In a recent mix for Bassdrive, she’s dedicated 2 hours to the Drum and Bass community playing only Norwegian artists like IGUBU (a really deep and interesting sound), Acta Pon It(who she often plays alongside IGUBU), Nostre and Fishy (“really good liquid tracks”), and of course TeeBee, (“but I guess everybody knows about him already.”)
There seems to be a sense of community that underpins all of this for Mira and something that has always felt prevalent in Oslo and Norway’s Drum and Bass scene. It’s a scene that has “exploded after the pandemic, growing like apples on trees” according to Mira who believes “it’s beneficial to everyone.” For the last two years Mira has also made her own contribution to that bountiful tree with Ladies First; Norway’s first and so far only female-focussed Bass night, which comes to Jaeger this month.
The seed was originally planted by another female club concept (albeit Techno-focussed), when “close friend” Gry Faia’s efforts for Femme Fatales made Mira question; “Why isn’t there anything like this in Norway or Oslo for Bass music?” She had “seen it worldwide; girls playing Bass music,” but it was noticeably absent back home.
Drum and Bass had always been something of a boys club – “isn’t it still?” asks Mira rhetorically. Even in its earliest forms when female DJs like Storm and Kemistry set much of the tone of the genre, it was a male artist like Goldie that would become the face of the genre. In an article for the Guardian Storm said it even went as far as adopting the role of agent rather than DJ to secure bookings. “When people phoned after they heard the tapes (Storm & Kemistry DJ mixes), I would say I was looking after these DJs rather than we were the DJs.”
While most would say that level of sexism is no longer tolerated in the DJ world, the effects of these early days are still prevalent today with fewer female DJs still appearing on lineups, especially in the Drum and Bass scene. It has started to shift (although only very recently) with the likes of Sherelle and Nia Archives. “You also have Frenetic, Lens, Alley Cat, Charlie Tee,”adds Mira, “you have a lot of girls now. “
“More and more girls are playing drum and bass,” and Mira wanted to reach out to them. “If there was anyone out there that felt the same way I did, I wanted to create a safe space for them,” and Ladies First would be that space… but it would be delayed.
“I was going to do it and then the pandemic happened and then I got sick,” explains Mira. “I got breast cancer late November 2022,” she elucidates showing me a series of tattoos on her forearms commemorating that date and various others on the road to recovery.
After being diagnosed in 2022, all other things including music fell to the wayside. “Immediately you go into your own bubble,” reflects Mira. “You just have to ride the fucking wave and come out of it the other side.” She “was so determined” to beat it and everybody she talks to about it today “says she managed because of that mindset.”
She didn’t know what this would mean for her music and career as a DJ. Her first thoughts were “everybody is going to forget me, I’m ruined!” She would be absent from it all for over a year, and at times she felt like she “lost it all.” Coming out of it on the other side she would come to the conclusion that “cancer has been the worst and the best thing that’s happened to me. “
How was it the best? I ask… “The first gig that I had after the cancer was Skankin at Boksen,” she starts explaining. She had never been a DJ to plan her sets before, always relying on her instincts to “read the floor.” That changed when she first entered the booth again. “After the chemotherapy I felt so rusty, I had to plan the set. I realised it works and I have much more freedom.” That quickly evolved in a new found confidence in her skills and finding her form to a point where she can comfortably be “winging” the more casual sets.
In the end Mira believes she “came out of it a better version.” She won’t suffer the more trivial aspects of life like “traffic”, instead spending her time focussed on the things she enjoys, and a big part of that is “mostly music,” she insists.
With Ladies First in its second year and the concept coming to Jaeger on some select Wednesday in 2026, Drum and Bass continues to play an important part of her musical adventures today, but it doesn’t stop there for Mira.
Since 2020 she’s also returned to that first love, Techno. As BECH, she’s been featured on various Techno lineups like the aforementioned femme fatales. Techno has always been close to Mira’s heart, counterpointing the “more aggressive” nature of Drum and Bass with Mira leaning towards “a deep rolling hypnotic” sound when it comes to Techno. There’s something about the deep, dark and rolling sound that seems to straddle the two worlds for Mira, but there’s still a definitive line, especially from the Drum and Bass perspective. It means Mira and BECH need to have some kind of distinction.
Early sets with Mira Mark playing Techno, had some Drum and Bass heads perplexed, so now she ensures that she separates those two worlds, with Mira Mark being the most recogniseable of those aliases for now. “When it comes to Techno nowadays, everything DVS1, Rødhåd a, Dextro and Ignez ”makes it into her record bag, but like her love of Drum and Bass it contains multitudes. “They all have a very interesting sound I`m so in love with.”
“I enjoy everything,” she insists. “I can play 120BPM sexy deep house vibes and I can also enjoy 140BPM Techno,” but it’s always “the same building blocks” from which “you have to build the floor.“