RYAN Playground Shows Her Humble Beginnings on the Court

I met up with Montreal-based producer and DJ RYAN Playground at the Fool's Gold Day Off party at Muzik, where she was hanging out before her set at Tattoo later that evening. After a rather drunk guy, also called Ryan, couldn't believe he had met a girl with the same name, I asked her about it. "Ryan is actually my last name," she explained. "I present myself as Ryan because it's simpler, but my first name is Genevieve, which is just super French. And 'Playground,' well, it's because I'm an only child and you know, I just liked to be independent from a young age, to be myself and play with my music. My music was my playground." Winding our way to the other side of the pool, we found a spot behind one of the speakers. "Man, today's been good," she laughed as she sat down. "I heard High Klassified's "Hyrule Castle" when I was in the bathroom and I was like holy shit I gotta get out of here right now because I want to jump to that song. And Lunice, I don't understand how much energy one guy can bring, but he's always fucking jumping around all day."

Playground has become a familiar figure in her hometown scene, playing alongside with serious heavy hitters despite only starting her DJing career officially a little over a year ago. The only child of two classical musicians, Playground was introduced to instruments like the violin and guitar from about the age of five. "At some point, I think I was about 11, I just started doing my own compositions with my guitar and drums," she explained. A little after that she discovered the FL Studio program and started messing around with that. "It was around then I decided to try electronic music and rapping", she remembers. "I was doing that for a few years on the side in my basement, making beats and just having fun with it." It was only after meeting a couple of people in Montreal, including her now-managers Saintwoods, that she took her project out of the basement and onto the dance floors. Despite not having much experience DJing, she found herself with a show and a deadline. "Yeah, I had to learn pretty quickly. I hadn't ever DJed in my life before that," she said with a laugh.

Clearly she caught the hang of it though, because her schedule has been pretty stacked ever since. Most recently she played Piknic Electronik, alongside Louie P, WYLN and CRi on September 14th, and her summer included sets alongside High Klassified, Da-P, Lunice, Kaytranada and Virgil Abloh to name but a few.

The video for her new track "The Void" is visually commanding, focusing on one kid with more swagger than I will ever in a lifetime, first against the backdrop of Playground's similarly neat friends playing basketball and later simply framed against a window. Simple and striking, it oozes that Montreal DIY-street-style vibe and makes me wish I had the hand-eye coordination for any type of ball-related sport. Shot by Jose Enrique Montes of Team NEW WORK, it also features styling by Travis Taddeo, Stopshop Boutik and AIKO Gang, who also worked with Playground on her previous video for her cover of Shigeto's remix of
"Futile Devices."

Playground has a bit of a soft spot for fashion, having worked as a model for a number of years now. When I met up with her, she was wearing this shirt from a local Montreal designer which understandably had more than one person stopping and asking if they could take a quick snap. "Some of the designers I really love are people like Benjamin Lafaille, who I'm wearing now, and people like Rad Hourani. That's more couture though and it's expensive so I don't buy his stuff, but I got a couple of pieces from him when I was working for him when I was younger and I love them." An avid skateboarder since the age of five, street style is a heavy influence for Playground's aesthetic. "There's New Regime in Montreal who really influence my style a lot, I really love those guys."

Now that fall is fast approaching (by that I mean here) and the summer parties are winding down (read: done), Playground is turning her attention back onto her original productions. "Now I'm focusing on writing again, I wanna release an EP or album in the next few months… I already have a couple of tracks I want to release but I'm hesitating, I'm still trying to decide if I want to do something like drop a track once per week or drop the full album. But for sure in the next few months it's going to be a lot of my original productions coming out," she explained. Playground does all the vocals for her tracks, both rapping and singing, and has set her sights on organizing a tour for 2015, "maybe into the United States but it might be Asia—we'll have to see what happens." Although Playground tried to keep her music as a bedroom project for as long as possible (she is also completing a degree in Communications and Marketing), it all seems to be truly taking off. "Honestly now that it's working, I think I'm going to jump on it and make the most of it."

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