Maya Jane Coles never intended to be a DJ, let alone one of the most exciting new names in house music when she first started producing hip-hop in her bedroom aged 15.

By her own admission, the 24-year-old Londoner despised house music. “I was quite anti house because the only stuff that I heard was really cheesy vocal stuff on the radio,” she says. “I hated it. I used to think, Who listens to that?”

That was set to change as Maya discovered more underground house and techno music, whilst partying to the likes of Steve Bug and Anja Schenider in and around East London. Aged 17; Maya bought herself some 1210′s and started learning to mix vinyl and play out.

“I wasn’t old enough to be in a club. But it’s more exciting when you’re that age, isn’t it, because it’s forbidden. I was totally hooked. Instantly, I knew I wanted to create my own take on it.”

Fast forward seven years and Coles has become house music’s hottest new property. Listening to her DJ-Kicks mix, it’s not hard to see why. It opens with the muted synth chords and broken post-garage beats of ‘Loqux & Past’ by Deft, gradually acquiring more rhythmic weight care of tracks such as ‘In My Cocoon’ by Bozwell, a moody throb of glassy sounding electronics, wispy vocals and globular bass, and Coles’s own ‘Not Listening’, a driving cut built on a pounding yet melodic groove and exclusive to this DJ-Kicks mix. It’s another Coles exclusive, ‘Meant To Be’, this time in her Nocturnal Sunshine guise, that marks the transition to a more shuffle-y, two-step-influenced passage. The word journey is often used to describe DJ sets — too often, perhaps — but it applies in this case, and on a grand scale.