From small clubs to Coachella: How Laura Häberle turned house, connection and community into a movement of her own.
Top LENA ELBERFELD, Panties LOW SEASON
She’s played at Tomorrowland and Coachella, DJed alongside David Guetta and founded her own label. Laura Häberle, better known as LOVRA, is one of those rare cases in the music business: a star without any airs and graces. There are moments you simply can’t stage. One such moment took place in an ice-cream shop in Ibiza. Häberle was standing in the queue, waiting for her ice cream, when suddenly a track she knew better than any other came over the shop’s speakers. First came the surprise; a heartbeat later, the amazement. “My first thought wasn’t: ‘Oh, that’s my track,’” she says, “but rather: ‘I know that one.’” And then, very quietly, came a particular kind of satisfaction that sets in when art reaches the place it belongs: everyday life.
Häberle grew up in an environment that initially had little to do with electronic music. She danced ballet, appeared on stage from an early age, was profiled in newspaper articles for her performances and as a result was bullied at school. “Every morning I’d go to my mum and ask if I really had to go to school, because I had a stomach ache.” And at some point she told the girls who were making her life difficult, with a laugh that was half defiance, half prophecy: “One day you’ll see my face everywhere.”
After Limburg came Frankfurt. Häberle studied communication design and art at the local university and discovered SoundCloud. What began as a playlist for friends on YouTube unexpectedly grew into one of the platform’s biggest deep house channels: 2.5 million followers, even before the word ‘influencer’ became a job title. She owed her first viral moment to a bootleg remix of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On – which Universal Music removed from the platform without comment before writing to tell her that, of course, it wasn’t legally acceptable, but that the mix was so good they’d be happy to release it. The deal she signed didn’t earn her a single cent. “I got off lightly,” she says today, without any bitterness.
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As is so often the case, her path to Berlin was paved by a love story. She moved to the city for the music – or, to be more precise, to follow a man she’d met through her channel, who was a musician himself. Back then, she wasn’t paid in cash for the graphic design commission for Club Magdalena, but with an old mixer, which she still owns today. “It still works perfectly.” That’s when she developed what she considers the true art of the craft – not the technical blending of tracks, but reading a crowd. “Meeting people where they are right now: for me, that’s the real art of a DJ.” LOVRA is a portmanteau of ‘Love’ and ‘Laura’, and that interplay defines her approach both on and off stage: she smiles, reaches out to the audience and engages with them. No mystery, no mask, no calculated aloofness. In a scene where many DJs hide behind a shell of introversion and become someone else on stage, LOVRA is the opposite: “People give me direct feedback. I give feedback right back. That’s my drug.”
She has long been among the genre’s established names: Tomorrowland, Ibiza, the Ministry of Sound in London – LOVRA is the only German woman ever to have played at Coachella. She performed with David Guetta in front of 100,000 people in Montenegro. She doesn’t mention this of her own accord, and if you ask, she adds the caveat almost automatically. Legendary nights in small, intimate underground clubs are just as important to her. “I’m an absolute festival girl. But I also love the small, dark clubs.”
Häberle used the Covid-19 hiatus to make a change of direction that’s rather unusual: whilst other DJs soften with success, her sound became harder. From radio-friendly deep house to tech house, then further towards harder textures. And now, with subtle irony about the way her own sound keeps swinging back and forth, she’s softening again, heading back towards UK house. It’s not a matter of random choice; she doesn’t follow the market, only herself.
She took the next big step on the spur of the moment: on 1 May 2023, at a Kreuzberg restaurant that holds perhaps 150 people, she founded her label, House Cat. The name came from her cat’s nickname – Zoe da House Cat – and from what Häberle’s creative instinct immediately recognised: it was strong from a marketing perspective, visually play- ful and rich in symbolism. The local authority pulled the plug shortly after it began. The city was cordoned off due to demonstrations. Once the police had left, she start- ed again. Before long, hundreds of people were gathered around the restaurant and out on the street. “It still gives me goosebumps,” says Häberle, “that was pure love.”
House Cat is now more than just a label. It’s a movement that Häberle describes using the vocabulary of community – family, belonging – whilst rejecting any notion of exclusivity.
– Lovra
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House Cat is now more than just a label. It’s a movement that Häberle describes using the vocabulary of community – family, belonging – whilst rejecting any notion of exclusivity. Whether you have 100 or 100,000 followers, anyone who makes good music gets to share the stage with her. This summer, House Cat is hosting a residency at Café Mambo in Ibiza, the island’s oldest venue. This autumn, it’s Ministry of Sound in London. And New York City is in the pipeline.
In her private life, Häberle doesn’t listen to much music. Her favourite band is Third Eye Blind, an American rock band from the late nineties, virtually unknown in Germany. “They’re a bit of a high-school rock band, and their songs are always about all the facets of love, but always with a happy ending.” That, she says, is really her motto in life. Then she laughs. It doesn’t sound like she’s putting on an act. There are many in the music business who talk about authenticity. Laura Häberle, aka LOVRA, is one of those rare cases where you actually believe it.
CREDITS
Photography by ANITA BARRY
Production JOHANNA ERDL, ANTONIA DIPNER
Styling by LENA LAUER
Hair & Make-Up SYDNEY RAAB
Light Assistant JOHANNA ERDL
Location STUDIO CHERIE