If you’ve been around Los Angeles’ underground dance and electronic music scene in the last decade or so, you’ve probably run into Lacey IQ (aka Inquiri), either behind the decks, performing her own music, or on the dance floor in a dark and hazy warehouse, loft, or club tucked away somewhere in the city. This Texas-born, LA-settled music maker and DJ has been mixing music for the love of dancers since 1998, as well as creating her own diversely-flavored catalog of music since 2002.

Lacey spent several years working for Native Instruments, the most recent of which were spent as a Traktor technical specialist and beta tester. From there, she moved on to teach DJing professionally, both for private institutions and local electronic dance music community-oriented nonprofit organizations Open Tone Project and Give a Beat.

Musically, though her first love as a DJ was and still is the gritty, soul-grabbing sound of Chicago and Detroit house and techno music, she frequently branches out into all sorts of musical directions, best illustrated by her ambient-bass music alias Inquiri (a project with two full-length album releases to date on her recently-hatched label Concurrent Recordings). As a DJ, beat maker and tireless dancer on the floors of Los Angeles, Lacey has her hands (and feet) in a little bit of everything: house and techno, downtempo, bass music, ambient, and everything in between. She has also recently been spotted dancing in a handful of music videos for LA artists such as local deep house band Zona, as well as iconic Chicago house DJ and producer DJ Colette.

Often spotted getting down behind the decks too, it’s hard to catch this groove-chasing DJ standing still for even a moment, whether it’s during a performance or in a classroom sharing with the younger generation. Her simple words on the matter of musical movements: “If you’re not excited enough to dance to your music, no one else will be either.”