Q&A

We chatted to the Sydney Boiler Room DJ’s ahead of their Saturday sets

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’d know that Boiler Room Sydney is officially happening again this Saturday. And while the 99% of us who missed out on tickets can wallow in spades of FOMO, at least we have something to vicariously live through.

Lucky for all of us, you have more than one way to get a sneak peak into the BTS of Saturday night. This week, we sat down with homegrown talent Mincy and Nina Las Vegas to talk all things Boiler Room – from pre-set jitters to their greatest inspos.

And before we get into it, we couldn’t leave without giving Absolut Vodka their own very special shoutout. Their worldwide collaboration with Boiler Room not only allows these types of gigs to happen here in the first place, but they’re part of the reason why Sydney is finally starting to develop such a strong presence of underrepresented, diverse and radical music scenes.

In other words, Sydney nightlife is finally making its overdue comeback. There, I said it, and you heard it here first.

Q: Scoring a Boiler Room set is a dream for most DJs. How did you feel when you got the call up?

Mincy: Proud. I grew up in Australia watching every Boiler Room I could on Youtube from UK and USA, so it feels quite surreal to be able to put my name against an internationally renowned brand like Boiler Room. I’ve put in a lot of hard work both in my own career and into the Australian dance music community as a whole over the last few years, and it’s really affirming to see that recognised.

Nina Las Vegas: This is my second Boiler Room, having played one of the first Australian Boiler Rooms in Naarm back in 2018. I also have hosted Boiler Room for the past few years, so I feel pretty connected to the team. With that in mind, when I got the call up to play with Anna Lunoe B2B I thought ‘about time’ lol.

Q: You’ve been in the industry for quite some time now, but are there ever still any pre-set nerves that kick in?

Mincy: I get extremely nervous every single gig I play whether it be to 20 people or 10000. I have no solution to it and will probably continue to be a nervous wreck for the rest of my DJing career. Once I play that first track of a set I’m having the time of my life though.

Nina Las Vegas: For sure, but usually I panic two days before. Then I remind myself that I’ve done this a million times, and everything will be ok!

Q: Tell us what the DJ’ing trajectory has been like? How did you get into the scene in the first place, and how did you get to where you are now?

Mincy: I was a raver for ten years before I even considered starting to DJ or produce. I could not consume music enough during this time – at one point I moved to the UK for 2 years purely to immerse myself in the garage, grime and dubstep scenes there because I was sick of just watching it via documentaries on Youtube. I spent years travelling around different countries experiencing whatever festival and club scene they had to offer. 

Realistically I decided to start DJing because I wanted to be able to join in at after parties, but I also realised that after being a punter for so long I thought I may have something to offer the dance community as a DJ, as I’d spent a lot of time pouring over so many genres of music, new tunes, anything I could get my hands on.There wasn’t a huge amount of female DJ role models for me around that time – they were scarce on lineups, so I thought it was time to give it a crack and break that mould. 

I got to where I am by creating my own opportunities. I wanted to be booked for DJ sets, so I created my own event and put myself on support slots. I wanted to be able to play tunes I had made, so I taught myself to produce music. I wanted to release the music I made, so I built my own label to release my music on. These opportunities started to to build momentum, people started to pay attention, and things started to expand from there. Aside from that, I’m an electronic music history nerd and a DJ before anything else, and I think that passion shows.

Nina Las Vegas: There is no same journey for anyone, and people need to remember that. 2025 marks 20 years of me being paid to play music to people, which is actually wild (and privileged) when you really think about it. I started as a club DJ, evolved into a radio host, curator, producer, artist and label owner. I’m still a club DJ, and I’m proud of my rollercoaster of a career, that’s still very-much going, and going.

Q: Tell us one DJ ick you have?

Mincy: DJs who announce they are headlining something. If you’re headlining it should be obvious, you shouldn’t have to say it lol.

Q: Where do you draw your sources of inspiration when prepping for a set like this?

Mincy: We’re living in a world with an extremely short attention span and music being made at a rate like never before – so much is being discarded or forgotten after a few weeks or a few plays. The best source of inspiration for me is digging in my own music collections and old hard drives. I love playing older tunes in my sets, I love nostalgia, I love sharing forgotten gems or tunes that younger audiences may not have heard before, and I love sharing my own productions I have worked on. So this set will mainly be drawing on that as inspiration.

Nina Las Vegas: My friends tbh. I have such a strong and global network of peers that I am never short of inspiration, music or even sneaky unreleased edits.

Q: What are your thoughts on the Sydney nightlife scene at the moment?

Mincy: We are obviously very lucky at the moment within Sydney. There is a big swing towards nightlife being recognised as an important part of Sydney’s cultural tapestry and hopefully this continues further. We have clubs reopening, events happening more nights a week, audiences growing. We do need to be careful though that we don’t lose the momentum we started building pre-Covid around diversity within these events – there are some all male lineups popping up again that I’ve noticed and other little bits trickling in. Diversity and inclusivity is what makes a scene rich, exciting and fun, and we need to make sure we foster that as much as we can while we’re having this huge swing of popularity within the scene.