The London-based DJ and producer shares a ‘soft, sexy, and apocalyptic’ mix
Bringing high-feminine sorcery to the dancefloor, Manuka Honey, also known as Marissa Malik, is a rising star in the experimental underground. The multidisciplinary artist serves hot and heavy sets featuring Latinx-infused club music and jaw-dropping live performances, where it’s not uncommon to see club-goers grinding up against the decks, or Malik herself licking the mixer. A practising astrologer and the co-founder of London’s Latin-American queer collective and club night SUZIO (‘dirty’ in Spanish), she released her debut EP Industrial Princess back in 2021, before embarking on a globe-hopping stint of steamy live shows. Now she’s fresh off the release of her sophomore EP 3Eternities Beneath You (also included in Dazed’s February 2024 album highlights). “I wanted to make something genre-bending that spoke to the infinite,” she tells us.
For her exclusive Dazed mix, Malik shares a “soft, sexy, and apocalyptic” selection of tracks, featuring the club-ready and disorientating sounds of DJ Doraemon, Florentino and Zuli – listen below.
How’s your winter going – any plans?
Manuka Honey: My winter is/was very dreamy, actually. I spent the beginning of 2024 cocooned in my London home and studio finishing a very exciting commission and working on the visual identity of my EP 3Eternities Beneath You. January was about looking after my body in ways I often ignore when I’m wrapped up in the momentum of solar-powered touring/DJ life. February was about me emerging from that chrysalis; I got back on the road and zoomed from Spain to Switzerland to Bristol. Now, I’m writing to you from the tail end of an amazing tour across North America! A few nights ago I turned it out at Paragon in Brooklyn. The club was heaving from start to finish. It was one of my favourite DJ sets to date - my heart is full.
Tell me about 3Eternities Beneath You – what's the idea behind the name? What are some of the main inspirations?
Manuka Honey: This EP feels like a mirror to my soul, so putting it out in the world has been beautifully terrifying. I wanted to make something genre-bending that spoke to the infinite. Music allows us to suspend time, and so does sex. The way we conceive of time in the west is also such a farce; in indigenous Peruvian societies (and many others) time is circular and we are so much more connected to our ancestors via this format. We know this as “Aymara time”. It warps life into a totally new framework: an innovation and an homage. This record is really about me meditating on suspending time, the eternal, sex, and how we create this in the club.
OK zooming back, what are some of your earliest memories of music?
Manuka Honey: I can remember my paternal Grandmother softly singing anything from sea shanties to Bollywood classics. Corridos, cumbia and country music were always playing when I’d visit my Mexican family in Texas.
“Music allows us to suspend time, and so does sex” – Manuka Honey
What would you say are some of your most formative musical experiences?
Manuka Honey: Learning to play the cello at age seven was such a game changer for me. Being able to form and manipulate sound with the tonal range of a cello was a dream, but I was always frustrated that I wasn’t good enough. I became quite obsessive about improving and then low frequency tones would haunt my dreams. I was quite a lonely kid, and apparently the cello is the closest instrument to the human voice. I think I wanted a friend in sound. Hearing my mum play reggaeton at home for years, then make Zumba routines to those tracks also helped me embed the dembow beat into my mind. When I discovered UK music as a teenager on Tumblr and Reddit, I shifted my focus to bassy wobbles of dubstep, the dub echo-soaked dancehall, and harsh but deep Grime. Mix this all together, and you can really hear each part of this in my sound now.
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
Manuka Honey: The worst thing someone has ever told me (which I think was meant to be comfort/advice) is that ‘the world is big’ and I might not come across a person or situation again. This has just wound up being so utterly untrue at every corner! I grew up in a small town, so it was easy to believe this at the time as everything else in the world just seemed gargantuan, but the older I get the more I realise everyone and everything is connected, and that the domino effect is global.
And the best advice?
Manuka Honey: I used to be a printmaker and illustrator in my early 20s. When I was doing my MA, I had a meeting with my favourite professor where I nervously told her I wanted to shift my art practice into sound, writing, and witchcraft but was worried that my audience wouldn’t get it. My ego was so staked in my ‘style’.
She told me that because I'm the common denominator of my work, and it’s all coming from me and my authentic soul, people will still see that and connect to it regardless of its form. She was right, and that was the best advice I’ve ever gotten. I’m now artistically quite fearless. I just trust that people will get it, and they do. I’m never afraid to pivot.
What are you listening to at the moment?
Manuka Honey: Meandering voice notes from my friends, the conversations of strangers, and hardstyle from 2011.
Tell us about your Dazed mix.
Manuka Honey: I wanted this one to be soft, sexy, and apocalyptic.
How were you feeling when making it?
Manuka Honey: Very transient! I made the mix in liminal spaces where I was moving between hyperfocus, almost missing flights because I couldn’t hear the gate announcements, and with the wide-eyed stares of toddlers hitting my face as they ran around my feet.
3Eternities Beneath You is out now
Tracklist
1. Earth - The Black One
2. Manuka Honey - When Oracles Watch X Coucoune Aw Doux Accapella
3. Sylvere - Epiphanie ft. Le Diouck
4. Aggromance - Hacia dentro
5. Zuli - Your Tracks Are Too Short
6. Keygurr - PRUEBA DE RESISTENCA
7. WLFFLUW XCIV - Mutant
8. Florentino - ???
9. Manuka Honey, Florentino - Miniskirt
10. Regis - Blue Trail
11. DJ Doraemon - Baiana
12. TUFI - AMPLEX
13. DJ LIVIO - Patronum Remix
14. NA DJ - Dise Riddim
15. Manuka Honey, Safety Trance - I Like It ft. La Favi
16. REMESA - ALP
17. Entrañas, Ene Ese - Trogón