At home with: Madam X in Athens

It’s a bright, sunny afternoon in October when DJ Mag rings the bell of Madam X’s third-floor apartment in Kypseli, Athens. The name of the neighbourhood means ‘beehive’ in Greek, and it’s an apt word to describe the buzzing area full of African and Middle Eastern eateries, Greek tavernas, enticing bakeries, lively bars and old- skool kafeneios that Christiana Vassilakis now calls home. The Greek-British DJ, producer, and KAIZEN label boss has been primarily based in Athens since 2021. Having lived on the island of Crete in 2020 before moving to the Greek capital, Crissi’s airy apartment in Kypseli, opposite a beautifully restored neoclassical building, is where she now resides when she’s not touring or visiting friends and family in the UK.

Born and raised in Milton Keynes to an Athenian father and a Thessalonian mother, Crissi started DJing over a decade ago. During her gap year, she worked three jobs and spent her earnings on second-hand Technics, teaching herself how to mix. By the time she moved to Manchester for university, she was primed to play on the city’s club circuit. It’s where she also co-ran the underground grime and bass music collective BPM. In 2014, Crissi left BPM and migrated to London, where she worked in hospitality between helming a residency on NTS Radio, and launched her label KAIZEN and its event series, Kaizen Klub, at Bussey Building. Today, KAIZEN is a platform for futuristic, club-driven cuts, twisting up strains of bass, dubstep and techno. Walton, Biome, Silas & Snare, Cartridge and many more have released on the imprint, and last year, Cimm’s track ‘Street Kings’ reached number 1 on Beatport’s Dubstep & Grime chart.

More recently, Hugo Massien’s EP ‘Outer Reach’ has received glowing reviews from Dusky, Giant Swan and Giulia Tess to name a few. 2024 marks 10 years of KAIZEN. The name means ‘continual improvement’ in Japanese. It reflects Crissi’s razor-sharp vision for every project she pursues, whether she’s deftly mixing swampy basslines with stinging techno and broken beats, collaborating with Luke Menikmati on the next round of MDMX Apparel — Crissi’s fitness and rave wear brand — or working with far-reaching producers on her debut EP. Following a stacked 12 months, including a BBC Radio One residency, a Boiler Room in London, supporting Bicep in the USA, and touring Australia and New Zealand, Crissi’s current focus is on her upcoming EP. The record will include collaborations with Athens-based artists like Mortimer Dubaton, Ekelon, Poor J’Darr and Jeph Vanger.

We’re sat in Crissi’s turquoise and apricot-coloured apartment, where she’s finishing up some admin before we go for an amble through the “hood” to visit a few of her favourite spots. She is dressed in all black and sporting a Posh Spice haircut circa 1999, which she first donned months ago — well before a certain Netflix documentary came out. She’s prepping for three weeks on the road, stopping in Copenhagen, Montréal, New York and Los Angeles. As we settle into her sun-lit living room, Crissi describes how her apartment, and Athens itself, is her sanctum between touring. “I feel like I can work comfortably here and sit at any coffee shop or in my apartment,” she says. “I just have the energy to do things and I don’t feel stressed. It’s a really good place to be a nomad or a self-sufficient freelancer.”

“I’ve met so many friends from literally walking around and meeting people in coffee shops and bars,” she continues. “Athens is such a hospitable place. People are engaging, people are having conversations. It’s a ‘sit outside, socialise, eat and share’ kind of place, and I react well to this. I’ve made friends in vintage shops. I’ve been stopped on the street and complimented on an outfit that has since blossomed into a new relationship with a group of nice gals, and exchanged numbers with people sat outside tavernas, bars etc. I haven’t actually used my phone that much to find people.”

Crissi feels that Athens-based artists approach their work a little differently to those in the UK. “Everyone’s doing it because they love it. It’s done at a slow pace. It’s done with intention. It’s not this weird competitive landscape where it’s like, ‘We have to get something out immediately because festival season is approaching, and we've got to hit these targets and pay our rent!’ It’s a totally different atmosphere, and it works for how I like to work.

“I think art doesn’t come from feeling this stress to create or to meet a deadline; you can’t rush good art,” she continues. “There’s so much questionable music coming out because we’re living in this age where people expect things instantaneously, and I think that compromises how music is made. Everything is now basically in 15-second sequences. It’s got to be TikTok-able, you know? I just want to delete all that from my life, drown out the noise, be present, and be less on my phone. That’s what I can do here in Greece.”

During a family holiday in Patras in the latter half of summer 2020, Crissi decided not to return to the UK with her folks for lockdown number two. “I had this visceral feeling in my gut, where I felt like I didn’t want to leave Greece,” she recalls. “I’d also luckily already decided to move out of my apartment in London as everything unfolded.”  With the music industry on a hiatus for the foreseeable, she promised her parents she would return to Milton Keynes in 10 days and headed to Crete with her sister Zoe. Those 10 days turned into six months on the island, where the siblings hired a car and explored every nook and cranny of Crete.

Lockdown rules were relaxed compared to London, so the sisters spent their time hiking up the mountains, swimming in the Aegean, sampling the local cuisine and availing of the reduced accommodation rates. They lived in the harbour town of Falassarna for most of their trip, where the girls adopted two sinewy kittens, Sakis and Rouvas, named after “the Ricky Martin of Greece”. It’s also where the pair launched the popular MDMXERCISE classes on Zoom. “It purely happened out of a want for a community and a connection,” she says. “And that gave us a bit of a purpose and a bit of something to do. That, and also finding the cats.”

Continuing her residency on NTS Radio allowed Crissi to remain tuned in to new music during lockdown. However, her main motivation was to feel present in Greece and do activities that provided “immediate dopamine”, like exercising, eating well, stroking the kittens and connecting with her sister. While MDMXERCISE classes took off, the girls launched an eponymous mix series, inviting DJs like SHERELLE, Shanti Celeste and OK Williams to record high-energy soundtracks for the sessions. “There was just no pretension in that Zoom Room,” says Crissi fondly. “There wasn't a weird hierarchy like, ‘I'm the DJ, and you’re the punter’. We were all in it together, and I didn’t realise how much it really helped people’s mental health.”

The series stopped once Crissi returned to touring two years later, and Zoe returned to work. But the classes helped MDMXERCISE morph into the fully fledged brand it is today, with its top-quality apparel, pop-up shops, and real-life sessions at Albania’s ION festival and The Friendship Miami-to-Bahamas cruise festival. On New Year’s Day in 2021, Crissi, Zoe and the cats took the ferry to Athens. They both craved a metropolitan vibe despite the city being in lockdown. Like their lives in Crete, they explored their surroundings and continued to programme the MDMXERCISE classes. Not long after, Crissi landed a residency on Movement Radio, now called Stegi Radio. "That really gave me a new lease of life because I was really proactive, reconnecting with music again," she says. “I actually got to be behind the decks, mixing live. It was just me doing what I’ve always done. It was such a saving grace being able to do that.”

We head out for a stroll through the maze of Kypseli and into the bustling neighbourhood of Victoria, passing the fish taverna, Ouzeri tou Laki, where Crissi had dinner on the day of her At Home With photoshoot. She relishes Greek food, and it’s something that’s been in her life since day dot. “I love my horta, my Greek salad, my feta, my fish, grilled octopus, fasolakia. Just anything green and tomato-y, I love it all. It takes me back to my childhood when my grandpa was living with us, cooking every day. We’d come back from school, and so much food would be on the table.” She describes her teen self as a “rebellious kid” who didn’t take well to rules and regimes. Listening to pirate radio and tuning into Annie Mac’s show on BBC Radio 1, she ventured into the rave world at the age of 15. Armed with a fake ID, she saw Shy FX play at a club in Oxford. “I discovered drum & bass, and the rest is history.”

We roam into Exarchia, near Mortimer Dubaton’s studio, where Crissi has already spent a few sessions jamming. We stop by CΟΟΚοoMÈLA GRILL for a massive mushroom gyros and wander to Pedion tou Areos park for a cold drink. It’s golden hour, and the park is a peaceful, tree-lined haven just off the screaming main road into the suburbs. What was it about d&b that caught Crissi’s attention? “I really connected to it. The intensity, the rawness of it, the epic intros, the pace, fast drums, crescendos.

I just really felt the mind, body and soul connection on the dancefloor. It was electrifying.” After her own DJ career took off, Crissi would go on to play alongside Shy FX. Did that feel like a full-circle moment? “It’s really surreal when that happens,” she says, naming Loefah as another “hero” she has worked alongside and a mentor who showed her the ropes of running a label. “Loefah was someone who inspired me so much, even just how he mixes. He basically introduced a whole new genre of music, like techno’s reaction to dubstep. He was across that with SWAMP81. He was the guy finding the artists and giving them platforms. He created a whole subgenre from the input on his record label.”

While she drew inspiration from Loefah’s DJ skills, she also developed her own style of quick mixing and genre-hopping when she started out. Now, the sound of Madam X is “a lot more refined”. “I think I'm more about telling a story, trying to connect with people, and creating moments on the dancefloor and surprising people,” she says. “I think maybe in my early years, I was just playing what I wanted to play and just trying to be a fucking rock star. And now I’m really conscious of everyone’s needs to have a good time, like a ‘let’s all connect together’ sort of thing.”

Connection is something Crissi channels into KAIZEN too. She’s just signed off on the next release from UK artist Debba. “I’m really proud to see how much feedback he took on board and how willing he was to alter the tracks in line with my ideas. It was such a pleasure to work with him,” she says. “It’s a collaborative thing for me — the label is something I love running. I want people to feel like they’re part of a family. It’s not an ego-driven project or a project that I’m doing for clout or to cement myself in the music industry. I’m doing it because I fucking love music, and I see the potential in these artists, and I want to help them grow.”

As the sky darkens, we snake back into Kypseli and chat about her next moves. “Fire merch” for the label, KAIZEN releases and Klub takeovers across the globe, a Madam X tour of Australia and the USA, expanding MDMXERCISE at festivals and hosting one-off workout classes are all on the horizon. It’s a lot, but Crissi explains how she stays grounded in the process. “What’s great about my current situation is that it’s my situation,” she says. “I live here because I intended to live here. I trust myself. I’ve got to a position where I'm not stressing about the next gig and the next money-making opportunity. I’m managing to slow down by living in this country and trusting my instincts. “As long as I’m always following my gut, I don't think things are gonna go wrong. I’m not aware of what’s happening on TikTok techno. I’m not following all of these top DJs and trends and trying to jump on those bandwagons. I’m nurturing existing relationships and doing what I know how to do. I’m trusting the process and trusting myself. I still really love what I’m doing.”

She also wants to “preach a bit of sobriety” in the music scene. “I think so many people love to villainize pop culture and music as a gateway into drugs and alcohol and destructive situations,” she says. “I believe that raving and music and connecting with people on the dancefloor and at festivals — because of the music — is therapeutic and [provides] a healing space. “And that’s kind of how I’ve always seen music. When I was 15, going to see Shy FX, I was not drinking or getting messy. I was genuinely just gassed to be present and surrounded by these amazing sounds and sensations. That sparked the passion for it. I think we should be talking about that more than ‘music equals drugs’.”

By pursuing all her various projects, Crissi is ensuring she's ready for whatever life throws at her. She recounts a period during the pandemic when her management dropped her, leaving her feeling discouraged. Zoe and her big brother Yiannis took her out for jerk chicken, encouraging her to figure out her next steps and set her sights on the horizon by getting a "spreadsheet going and start planning”. “I started writing down my plans and then went full steam ahead. Got new management — Jenny, fuckin’ love her — and a new lease of life. It’s not always a smooth-sailing process. There are gonna be bumps in the road where you just need to remind yourself: ‘Do I still want it? Why did I get into this in the first place? Because I fucking love music’.”