Jamaica Suk

A musician and experimenter, Jamaica Suk has fused her jazz and metal roots from the Bay Area California with a feel for soulful techno, a combination that makes her at home leading driving dancefoor workouts across Europe. With her record label Gradient and ac-companying event series, atop extensive activity as DJ and producer, she has found in Berlin a platform for the breadth of her musical versatility. In her signature distorted melodies and hints of melancholic bass guitar, you might hear where Jamaica started - playing bass guitar through her teens & college, playing in jazz ensembles, grindcore, math rock and shoegaze bands, before getting deep into the Bay Area’s house and techno underground. Jazz musician by day, DJ and promoter by night, she quickly became established throwing monthly parties at 222 Hyde Street in the infamous Tenderloin District and grimy Bay Area warehouses.

Technology was an early passion, too, including completing an Audio Engineering program at San Francisco’s respected Pyramid. That combination of technology and musical chops, meeting with an intuition for minimalism, and repetition from Reich to Sun 0))), Neurosis & Pan Sonic to techno classics, perfectly set the tone for her evolving productions. Based in the German capital since 2012, Jamaica has honed her production language, and with equal parts German and Pacifc, her music has earned a following for its postmodern, melodic narratives, soul and industrial sounds in balance.
Keeping with the milieu of producing for the discerning digger, she now turns her aesthetic perfectionism to her label Gradient, debuting with her own music and remixes, and the forthcoming Uncertain Landscape quadruple V/A series. Jamaica has also been a headline mainstay on the club circuit, including being a regular anchor of the kinky, redhot Pornceptual party in Berlin.