Hannah Wants: 2015's DJ phenomenon

Hannah has always grown up around music. Her mum, she remembers, would play everything from Fleetwood Mac to the Cranberries. Incredibly, her granddad was actually a proto DJ back in the 1940s, "One of the first people to put turntables into venues and play records instead of live bands." She even has his handwritten business card as proof: "Entertain with "SUPERSOUND," it says in businesslike capital letters; "Make Your Party A Success… Grand Selection Of Dance Tempo Records & Many Others". On the back, next to an illustrated musical note, is a signature and the date: "22/8/49". However, it wasn't until Hannah was 16 and raving – underage – in Birmingham, that her focus relocked from football to DJing. "I remember the first time I walked into a club, the DJ's name was Clinton Shawe. I watched how he was controlling the dancefloor, and I had this overwhelming feeling: that's what I want to do." She duly received a pair of Numark turntables for her birthday and set about getting there. The vibrant speed garage and bassline house scene of the millennial Midlands drove her on: the first record she bought was 'Shake It' by Lee Cabrera. Inspired by garage god and personal hero DJ EZ's virtuoso mixing, she began to establish her own approach as she practiced, alone, in her room. By 18, she had levelled up, breaking out into local bars and open mics, playing r'n'b and whatever else was required on crap karaoke equipment. She soon tired of that, and going by the name 'Hannah S' she set up her own party called Flaunt. It was thanks to her entrepreneurial spirit that she was able to exploit the untapped Sunday night market and make Flaunt a success. "I remember going back home and I'd made a grand in cash," she says. "I'd never seen that kind of money before." However, it would be a a few thousand miles away that she'd really make her name – and it wasn't Hannah S.

We walk on amid clusters of tourists eking out their hangovers in a haze of regret and ethanol perspiration on San Antonio's main drag, Hannah tracing her history, one dive bar, one tattoo parlour, one supermarket at a time. Gesturing to an inauspicious-looking apartment sloping back from the sunset strip, she points out her first Ibiza home. "Whenever I come back, it's not to some €10,000-a-day place, I come back to my little two-storey apartment, there." Politely declining the drinks offers and 2-4-1's of the surrounding establishments, she points out a modest-looking venue: Viva, the workers' bar. It was within these tiled confines that she first made her mark on the island in 2010. Then, she was between semesters of her sports studies degree, but she knew that wasn't her fate and felt Ibiza offered the best opportunity to change it. Putting the money she earned from PE teaching down on an apartment, and battling her natural shyness, she began to wangle as only she could. Indeed, she funded herself not through gigs – those were unpaid – but through her entrepreneurial nous. Pressed for details, she grows coy. "It was stuff I probably would have got in trouble for," she says, a guilty smile on her lips. Hustling to make ends meet in the daytime, she would frequently enter DJ competitions at Viva at night. These competitions, though a great proving ground, were far from glamorous. "You put your name in a book and if you had an early slot you'd have to wait around until five or six in the morning, sitting around like you were queuing for The X Factor." It was worth it: in a sea of tasteful tech-house, Hannah's bass-riveted sound stood out and she parlayed her frequent wins into a residency. Word spread, and when the headline DJ failed to turn up at a night in superclub Es Paradis – fittingly, for a Birmingham-born night called GLAS – Hannah received the call while in bed, asleep. "I questioned going for a second…" she grimaces, "but I got changed, ran down there and jumped on." Wasn't she nervous playing to the biggest crowd of her career thus far? "I'm pretty sure I was nervous…" She trails off, pensive. "This sounds weird, but I feel more comfortable behind the decks than I do out raving. " Because you're shy? "Yeah. But I've just experienced a lot through life and I think I know what the world's about."