Artist Profile: Florence a.k.a. Foxtrot
Words by Lauren Walker (she/her)
I first met Florence at The Foundry. She had short, bright red hair pulled up into a messy bun, wore a baggy hoodie (a brand too cool for me to identify) and flexed a funky pair of patterned flares.
I told her that I studied Art History and that I’d moved to Christchurch to work at an art gallery. Her boyfriend Fergus said, “That’s a bit of you, aye, Flo.” Florence agreed with an enthusiastic “fuck yeah!”
I didn’t know who she was then or that she even mixed. Instead, I was excited to have stumbled upon a fellow Wellingtonian. Being around Florence made Christchurch feel like home. Her confident spirit commanded attention as she spoke with vigour, often referencing affairs in pop culture that I hadn’t yet caught up with.
Florence Faith Ferguson a.k.a. Foxtrot (the codeword for F in the Phonetic Alphabet) describes herself as fun, energetic, kinda childish, and hungry. She wears Doc’s with leg warmers, mesh tops, and colourful dresses. In winter you’ll find her avoiding her BSci assignments to hit the slopes skiing (she prefers snowboarding but doesn’t want to be that girl). We both have a mutual love for kombucha (a.k.a. booch), slightly uncomfortable and horrifically delightful foreign films, and a yearning to desire to be bookworms, regardless of our short attention spans. She’s completely herself—no filter. I think that’s the key as to why she’s got her name on the rise.
Florence grew up in Pōneke listening to Radioactive 88.6 and bFM. Exposed to a lot of alternative, local electronic music as a kid meant she skipped the whole cringe commercial band phase most of us went through as teens. She says she was probably the least musical person prior to DJing and couldn’t even keep in time when two-stepping: “I used to think you couldn’t be musical without playing an instrument or four. But after shifting into mixing, I would call myself musical.”
The past three years have seen Florence play to packed crowds at venues like Hyde, Flux, Club 121, Rhythm & Alps, and, later this year, Mardi Gras. I remember when she got the phone call. We were having dinner at Thai Container, sitting outside in the cool Christchurch air when she told me with a beaming smile that she’d got the call to play Mardi in Queenstown. Still not having been to one of her gigs at this point, it was then that I realised just how good she must be live. I was merely a sideline supporter who’d jumped aboard for the ride just before the catalyst had been added to the mix. I felt like I only knew half of her, the side that the gig-goers didn’t get to see.
Moving from Pōneke to Christchurch isn’t easy, yet somehow Florence made it her home away from home, found her niche, and began mixing. The rise of DnB in the Dunedin scene naturally had an effect on Florence’s interest in mixing. “Some good friends of mine, who are now nationally known as Pirapus, had a little controller I would watch them on. After new years, and getting to know some boys in Tāmaki Makaurau, I found a little Techno scene, made up of friends who just simply got together and mixed. It was very supportive.”
She describes the experience of being up on stage as “kind of just like mixing at home, with my friends, or to myself, except I look up and there’s people there.” Sometimes she feels like a different person, hidden from the crowd if she’s wearing a hat, able to DJ mysteriously and be her goofy old self. Dark, smaller closed-in spaces are Florence’s favourites, like Flux in Christchurch, with its Boiler Room-esque set up. While being on a massive lit-up stage has its perks, like the artist pass and delicious dinner (told you she likes food) that came with playing at R&A, nothing beats the club. She tells me that no one will know when you’re not happy with yourself or if you’re an awkward dancer. DJing mysteriously allows a lot of artists to enjoy anonymous fame. “It’s cool. Like you probably wouldn’t recognise some of the world’s most famous [DJs] just out and about,” says Florence.
Florence now has brown hair, still rocks Doc’s, and probably always will. She’s taken to wearing Ruby dresses and making them look vintage, and can be found constantly commenting on the Facebook group Wet Rat. She speaks quickly when she’s excited, with a voice that sounds like smiles.
Tonight she’s back home in Pōneke playing a gig at Love Not Lost. It’s one of those typical cool Autumn nights in the city. Clear blue sky, a perfect sunset over the hills at Mākara. Town will be busy and my sad Covid-ridden body is jealous. Florence says to expect some hard, fast stuff. Not your typical 4x4 beat, but instead broken-up chopped beats. As she describes it, they’ll be busy “getting lost in the lights and the smoke machine.”
