Francesca Lombardo

Born in Lombardy’s Castiglione Delle Stiviere region, Francesca Lombardo began writing piano pieces aged six, later following her musical instincts to sing in school operas and bands. Estranged from commercial Italian pop music, her uncle introduced her to the world of electronic music, leading Lombardo towards London in the late ’90s to educate herself on music engineering, production and vocal techniques at various sound and technology schools.

With hardware out of reach, she relied on her burgeoning DJ career as ‘Jackie Misfit’ to kickstart a career in production. Early releases carved a path in underground techno, while her DJ lifestyle blossomed, with globe-trotting appearances at Burning Man, Tomorrowland and Circoloco. After 20 years of development, Lombardo was finally ready to merge her love of electronic music with her classical past, resulting in debut album Life of Leaf.

What came first, wanting to be a producer or DJ?

“DJing just happened. I moved to London in 1999, ended up going to illegal raves every weekend and suddenly started to DJ. I was already a musician, playing piano and singing, but the will to become a producer arrived when I was shown a studio by my piano teacher when I was 11 or 12 years old. I met a lot of people who helped me and showed my love for production by going to school but didn’t have any money to buy anything. My passion for DJing came a little bit later.”

Did your Italian heritage inform your taste when it came to music?

“Actually, when I lived in Italy I was just listening to whatever was on the radio and a lot of psychedelic rock and ’80s music. I liked the classical side of Italian music, but wasn’t into disco back in the day because it was too underground and Italian electronic pop music copied a lot of English music – it’s always been really cheesy and I didn’t like music sung in that language. I was always attracted to what people were listening to abroad, especially English music. I was lucky that my uncle