#13 Naina
On tacos, 5am bananas, and dangerous pani puri
This month’s edition of Salt Fat Acid House is a special one, as I was kindly invited by Taquiza in Peckham to take my interviewee out for dinner. Taquiza is a new Mexican street food restaurant aligned with next-door club The Carpet Shop, which regularly programmes great DJs. We ate spicy scallops, tuna tostadas, el pastor and prawn tacos and jalapeño-topped Margaritas (and somehow found room for chilli chocolate mousse and a lime zest flan.) It was all delicious and I recommend you book a table ASAP!
Naina is one of those people who’s deeply ingrained in London’s music scene, and we’re that much better off for it. She throws parties, presents a weekly show on Apple Music 1, runs the Hooversound label with her friend Sherelle, and is known for her hard and fast selecting skills as a DJ. Now, with her Survival EP, she can add ‘producer’ to that list.
“It's been a long time coming,” she says of her foray into production on the four-tracked EP. But she’s happy she waited. “If I’d done it when I was 18, I probably would have dropped a dubstep EP. My music taste is so broad that the reason I’ve never put music out is I don’t know what type of artist I am. But I’ve felt – in the last couple of years – that it doesn’t matter any more.”
“You don’t have to be a DJ and just play jungle, or a radio presenter that just plays pop,” she continues. “I don’t think that’s what being a tastemaker is any more. When I look at what I do on Hooversound, what I play in sets, and what I do on radio, they all are under the umbrella of electronic music. The thing that ties it together is me.”
As well as it being her production debut, the EP sees Naina vocaling the entire thing. On the strobe-lit ‘Body Movement’ and the teeth-gritting ‘Core Memories’, her voice is commanding and austere, perfectly suited to the tracks’ hardcore sensibilities. But the jungle-basslined ‘Valentine’ has Naina’s sung vocals, after she decided to put aside her reservations. “I was like, I can’t listen to this,” she says about recording herself singing for the first time. “I had to sit with it for a really long time until my whole body didn’t cringe up!” After getting good feedback from trusted friends and fellow DJs, though, she felt spurred on to release it.
Naina now recognises her fluidity within genres as a strength. “Hopefully the EP resonates with other people who also listen to lots of different types of dance music, which I think is more and more now. I’ve found more of those people that do exist, that aren’t just, like, dubstep bros, or drum ‘n’ bass bros. There’s people that listen to every style of electronic music with a sprinkle of pop, which I love!” Below, we chatted about Southall’s street food selection, her travels in Mexico, and why her rider isn’t just booze any more.
You’re at Carpet Shop regularly for No Edits [a community-focused event that programmes talks and demo sessions]. What do you like about it as a venue?
Naina: It’s the first club in a while that’s got me excited about nightlife in London. When the Alibi closed, it left a big hole. We would just go out there and bump into people. Carpet Shop feels like the closest thing to that – everyone putting on events there, going to the same things and a great soundsystem. I love that it’s in Peckham. It’s a small, independent, great sound system – the people that run it are so safe. And this place [Taquiza] is amazing because it’s the closest thing to actually being in Mexico. Apart from the fact that their tacos are hard shell, everything else tastes quite authentic.
So you were in Mexico recently – what did you eat there?
I’m a little bit – no, not a little bit, extremely intolerant to meat, specifically red meat. I can’t digest it, which is partly why I’m vegetarian. But I’ve always been weird about eating meat since I was a kid. My mum loves to tell this story: when I watched Babe, I stopped eating sausages and bacon because I hadn’t realised that was what I was eating. But when I went to Mexico, I had to indulge! I don’t eat pork, and I ate so much pork!
There was a restaurant in Oaxaca called Origen, which really stuck in my memory. They did tacos with mole and this beetroot salad – I’ve never had anything like it. The street food is unreal there, we were eating for the sake of eating. Sometimes we would just go get a taco, because it’s like a penny and it’s this small, so why not? God, food makes me so happy.
Are there things you miss from your pre-meat days?
Lamb biryani. I miss that so much. What’s weird now, though, is that more and more places are doing veggie biryani, which never used to be a thing before. Biryani was always rice and meat – the flavour comes from the meat, it soaks into the rice. It’s slow-cooked to make it extra delicious.
Do you cook a lot at home?
I go through phases. I live on my own, so by the time I’ve gone to the effort of cooking something, I don’t even want to eat it. A lot of what I do make is usually Indian food, and then all of a sudden I’ve got enough daal for a week. My mum does the same – she cooks like her kids are still at home.
There’s a classic black daal I make, which now everyone knows about because of Dishoom. But Dishoom puts cream in theirs. And I don’t like to do that, because I’ve never been taught to do that. So mine’s a bit healthier. There’s a yellow daal that I could live off. And rice. What would I be without rice?! Honestly, rice is my go-to: rice and daal, or egg fried rice, rice and tofu.
Where are your favourite spots in London to eat?
Will, who runs Scuffed Recordings, is a really good friend of mine – he took me to Silk Road in Camberwell. It's the most hectic place but the food is so good. They serve you straight away: dish, dish, dish. And then it’s like: you need to leave! It feels very family-run, boiling in there, the windows are steamed up. And then it shut down – I haven’t been since it’s reopened.
Then I recently went to north London, Finchley, for a dining experience at this Mexican lady’s house for my friend’s 30th. We sat in her house with some strangers and it was amazing, eating home-cooked food. It tasted like we were back in Mexico. Her young son had a little apron on and he was serving us drinks!
How about Indian restaurants, do you have any go-tos?
I love Mowgli on Charlotte Street, it’s near all the theatres. And people say Dishoom is overrated, but I’m sorry, it tastes so authentic – it’s even had my auntie’s seal of approval. But you can’t beat going to Southall and eating street food. When my sister got married, we went there to get our outfits. Obviously she was excited to get married, but she was mainly gassed about the fact that we were gonna eat there after – things like mixed grill with kebabs and chicken. The places look a bit worse for wear, but I find the worse they look, the better the food is!
I need to go back there! I did similar post-outfit buying, eating session with a friend who was getting married.
Last year I was hosting Boiler Room Southall and got there early so I could get some food first. There are these things called pani puri, a tiny little puff filled with potatoes and chickpeas and a spicy liquid. It’s one of my favourite things to eat. I fucking spilt it all down me. I couldn’t believe it, I was like, I’m going to stink! It’s lucky I only ever wear black.
Speaking of DJing, is there anything edible on your rider?
D’you know what? It used to be loads of booze. Booze for me, booze for my mates. And now my rider has taken a full-on turn, it’s like water, orange juice, strawberries, bananas. Because you’ve been jumping around at 5am and your body just wants a banana. So yeah, at 32 years of age, it’s bananas and strawberries.◼︎
As always, here’s a selection of some tracks that I’ve been enjoying, and that maybe you’ll enjoy too: