Jaguar’s Rekordbox Is Immaculate. She Ignores It Anyway.

JAGUAR x INTROE SONIC

Jaguar’s Rekordbox is immaculately organised, sorted by month and by mood. Then she gets behind the decks and often ends up going off piste anyway. Her best moments come when she reaches for an obscure record she’d never have picked if she’d stuck to the plan, and what she wants from a night is simple: a crowd that feels safe, sexy and connected to everyone around them.

Jaguar Bingham, 31, is from Alderney in the Channel Islands and is now based in East London. She’s a broadcaster, DJ and journalist, and one of a new wave of UK dance music names doing several things at once: her Introducing show on Radio 1 Dance, her club night, label, podcast and community UTOPIA, and The Jaguar Foundation.

[WATCH THE FULL SET]

She’s played Movement in Detroit, Lightning in a Bottle in California, WHP, DC10, Amnesia, Glastonbury, Circoloco and Radio 1’s Big Weekend, and has a residency at Pikes Ibiza. Mixmag named her Broadcaster of the Year in 2021, and she later won Best Radio Show for BBC Introducing Dance at the DJ Mag Best of British Awards, after the magazine had already called her “UK radio’s next gen champion”. She’s now co-hosted the International Music Summit in Ibiza with co-founder Pete Tong MBE for five years, and she hosted the DJ Awards in 2024.

Last year she released music for the first time. Debut record WILD! got big support from radio and club plays, including from Peggy Gou, and landed her features in Mixmag and Beatport and the cover of Ibiza Club News. Follow-up WHITE PONY went straight into the top ten tracks on Spotify’s New Music Friday, and DJ Mag has a “How I Made It” piece on it coming. She also put out an EP on UTOPIA. This year the music has kept coming, with releases on her label, with Felix Jaehn and KDA, and with WUGD and IN/ROTATION, and plenty more on the way.

Asked to describe her work in three words, Jaguar went for “exceptional, c*nty, bassy”. No false modesty there.

New music never stops coming in. Between her weekly Radio 1 shows and weekend gigs, tunes are constantly landing on her USB, and her Rekordbox is neatly sorted by month and mood. She’ll sometimes make a playlist for a particular show, but she usually ends up following the vibe and going off piste. She loves reaching for an obscure or random record she’d never have chosen if she’d stuck to a plan. Being spontaneous and reacting to the crowd is the key bit, she says.

Finding the music is half the fun. Through the BBC Introducing uploader, which nobody else can access, she hears thousands of tracks a week that no one else has. She also digs on Bandcamp, YouTube and SoundCloud, and keeps a long list of saved links from artists who’ve sent her music through her DMs. Working through that list and stumbling on someone obscure is one of her favourite things.

On what she wants people to feel, she’s clear: safe, sexy and “ultimately connected to everyone around them”. Dancing is a celebration of life, she says, and being behind the decks while people enjoy themselves is a huge privilege. “I bloody love it!”

That feeling is what UTOPIA is about: fun with no filters, and a celebration of LGBTQ+ communities. She launched it as a club night with a sold-out party at Night Tales in London, inspired by the queer parties and venues she’d come across as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Her love of house, techno, disco, jungle and drum’n’bass met an interest in student radio while she was in Leeds. Since then she’s put on UTOPIA events with Keep Hush, Foundation FM and Soho House, and she’s had a summer residency at Dalston Superstore, East London’s queer hotspot.

The Jaguar Foundation is her other project, run with Ministry of Sound and the Sony Music UK Social Justice Fund. Its first report, in 2024, looked at gender equality in UK dance music, covering gender imbalance, representation and accessibility, and it has run artist-led sessions with people like Jyoty, Jayda G and Bklava. Last year she teamed up with Defected Records’ ELEVATE diversity initiative for an event highlighting what female and diverse-led communities are doing for the industry, with I.Jordan and Taalia from Queer House Party, followed by DJ sets from UTOPIA artists. She finished the year with an Honorary Master’s from Coventry University, in recognition of her contribution to promoting and supporting women in dance music.

Her deadliest weapon is DJ Tameil’s “Rude Boy Giddy Up”. Her reason… who doesn’t love a bit of Jersey Ri Ri?

Artist: JAGUAR
Production: STUDIO INTROE
Series: INTROE SONIC
Location: London, UK

Full Set Tracklist

1. Jaguar – Unreleased
2. Mosca – Cedar Wood State (Volt Mix)
3. Jubilee & UNIIQU3 – Trippin'
4. Jaguar – Club Feelz
5. DJ Bone, DJ Lhoie – Sublimental feat. DJ Bone (Original Mix)
6. Jaguar – Weapon X
7. Felix Jaehn, Jaguar, Faangs – Why You Mad
8. Jaguar – International
9. CyberKills – Shame On Me
10. Jaguar – Gimme Dat (MUCKANIKS REMIX)
11. Swoush – Stormi
12. Sam Binga & Fracture – GDMT
13. Jaguar – WILD! (p-rallel Remix)
14. Faux Real – Walking Away from My Demons (Wet Leg Remix)
15. Baauer – Harlem Shake (Mary Droppinz x Jaguar UKC Mix)
16. Jaguar – Dedicated
17. Clova – Free Fall

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