“Music can unite and delight. People can connect through music whether they share a mutual language or not and it can soothe in ways that are indefinable,” says Freya Barnes, known across Melbourne dance floors by her alias, Lady Banton.

With an impassioned love of Jamaican music, Lady Banton is known for her infectious rhythms and inciting a “dirty grindy mayhem of bodies”. She is also part of the mighty Melbourne based crew, The Operatives (www.theoperatives.com.au).

Armed with music from around the globe, she says; “I pride myself on seducing people onto the dance floor, getting subconscious head nods at the bar, as they casually slide closer and closer until there’s a heaving mass of people lost in the music and excitement.”