Cry Baby is the New York techno DJ intent on breaking barriers

Cry Baby might not be the most descriptive artist name for 33-year-old Lauren Martinez. Spend more than five minutes in her company and you’ll quickly find that sitting around whinging about a situation isn’t for her. When she sees a problem, the house and techno DJ (originally from Miami but now calling New York home) likes to get up and do something about it – so much so, she’s started her own female DJ collective to help artists from her hometown get gigs.

“I didn’t know one female DJ who hadn’t had to leave Miami to get gigs,” she says. “I play some of the best clubs in New York, but I’d go back to Miami and literally couldn’t get a set. They just don’t want to book women there.”

After deciding to pursue a career in DJing when the recession forced her to close the Miami clothes shop she owned roughly seven years ago, Martinez hot-footed it to New York and plunged into the house and techno scene. Bartending three nights a week to make ends meet, she began picking up sets in NYC, including regular spots at hip basement venue Submercer, before joining forces with a group of friends including Louisahhh!!! to head back to Miami in 2011 and throw a party at WMC.

“That really opened a lot of doors for me,” she explains. “It wasn’t a huge party but we had Radio Slave and Arthur Baker and it was a real step up.”

Telling us her DJ sets are likely to go in one of three directions – the kind of techno you find on Romanian labels like [a:rpia:r], really hard techno like Surgeon, or on a Chicago tip like Ron Trent – Cry Baby first caught our attention when she warmed up the Lab NYC, impressing so much that it became a regular slot.

So with an all-female DJ collective to helm, and fighting the good fight against what she sees as Miami’s sexist booking policies, what else is on her already jam-packed to-do list?

“I want to get to the point where I can play live,” she tells us. “I really want to do an album, and then get to a point where I can do a proper live show.”

On past form, we don’t doubt she’ll get it done.

Cry Baby is in the Smirnoff Sound Collective. Find out more here

Sean Griffits is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow him on Twitter