Raving already ran through Mor Elian's blood at eight years old. Her older sisters were her idols, and they were going to parties in clubs and car shops in their home city of Tel Aviv. Elian was ready to be as invested as they were in partying. "I didn't realise that I was way too young," she says. "I thought, maybe I'll dress up and they'll take me with them." Two years later, she had already booked her first DJ.

"When you get to 10,11, the birthdays start and you don't get a clown or a magician. It becomes dance parties and they bring a DJ." Elian decided she would be the first one to book a DJ for her birthday party, and an older relative linked her with his DJ friend. When anyone had a dance party, she would stand next to the person playing music, more interested in what was going on with them than the party itself.

Today, Elian is a globally touring DJ. She's appeared on labels run by Delta Funktionen and La-4a, and started up her own label, Fever AM. She promotes the LA-based party Into The Woods. She also runs a jewellery line, MYRRH Jewellery. As we sit across from each other in a Berlin café, not too far from her studio, on a beautiful spring day, she tells me about her journey to this point.

"Nothing came easy for me," she says. Her mother had to build from zero when Elian was young. Elian started working at 15 and has never stopped. Her jobs included a stint at a skate shop, which allowed her to meet people from the local music community in Tel Aviv who would come in and put up flyers for shows. It also helped to fund her early obsession with music, buying records at a local record store.

"I'm grateful for that time because I was given a lot of independence," she says. "I still had a very loving, responsible mother, but she was like, 'I'm in this situation so we have to become more equal—you have to work.' I knew I would never do anything to hurt or disappoint her so I finished high school and got my certificate."

Still, it would have been hard to move on to college in Israel. "The professional private schools for art and design are pricey in Israel and I didn't have financial support. Getting admitted to college in the US is easier, I was able to get lots of scholarships and financial aid." Knowing this, and after going through the complex and difficult process of opting out of army service when she was a teenager, Elian realised that she had to move elsewhere. She went to Los Angeles to live with her sister, who was already based in the city. It was during this period that DJing and her jewellery line started to take off.

"From America, I had a better chance of starting from zero than I did in Israel," she says. In LA, she finished school and started throwing the Into The Woods parties with Jimmy Maheras. They booked DJs like Noncompliant, K-Hand, DJ Minx and Andrés, artists that might not already be getting gigs in LA. "There was no agenda at the forefront," she says. "It was like, I want to book all these DJs and a lot of them happened to be women and people of colour."

It took Elian a while to find her house and techno people in LA, as well as good friends. She says it's perhaps due to the way the city is structured that her friendships didn't mature. The difficulty to maintain connections is something people in wide reaching cities can relate to. But "there were people who just felt like family. When that happens, the whole place changes. Community is really important! I still feel really connected to them."

"I threw some nights in LA, no one came," she continues. But it got better. Opportunities started coming in for Elian to DJ. "A crowd started forming and we got new fresh faces and kids. We had this golden era, I was talking to [local promoter and DJ] Cooper Saver about it, all of a sudden people were throwing underground parties in LA." With LA clubs facing a closing time of 2 AM, and many events getting shut down by authorities, Berlin, where Elian went next, provided a huge contrast.

"I didn't want to go back to Israel," she says. "I don't know if I ever will—it depends what changes there. I wanted to be closer to my mother as well, I miss her and people get old. Berlin is the first place I've lived in without having family around, which is really weird. When I have bad days, I have my friends and my partner, but I don't have my mum or my sister to be that anti-anxiety remedy. It's not an easy life to live, not even just professionally—life is hard in general."

Elian has a studio in Berlin, where she works at least three days a week, and a small studio in her bedroom so she can try out a different method of producing. "I wanted to be more intuitive, if I want to do it now or get into it in a more intimate way. My studio in LA used to be in the bedroom as well, I would get stoned," she laughs.

As a producer, Elian has had a very distinct evolution. Her first three records, released on Prime Numbers, Hypercolour and Finale Sessions, contained rumbling house and techno jams. The powerful whack of the low-end and extra-terrestrial synth flourishes sitting in the tracks hinted at something more—it was clear Elian was only getting started. "I listened back [to the first three records] and was like, it's a bit aimless," she says. "I liked so many different types of music that I wasn't really sure what I wanted it to sound like. It was a time of learning. It's stones in my path, little landmarks." As for the records since then, RA's Angus Finlayson observed in a review: "On releases for Delft and Fever AM, the Israeli artist injected more personality and pungent mood into her minimalist productions."

"Personally, I didn't have the confidence to try it," she says, musing on her starting point in production. "Then I started seeing it's possible... you sit there and see someone doing something, you're like, I can see how this works. You have to ask for help a lot in the beginning, you can watch tutorials. It's never-ending."

Starting Fever AM with Rhyw from Cassegrain was a turning point in Elian's production career. The first record on the label was her own Cymatic Ring, which made its mark with weird, bright, pumping electro. This was Elian's way of telling people that, after years of trying, she had found her sound. Now that she's cracked it, electro flows the easiest for her.

"When I started producing, I wanted to make functional dance tracks, and when I separated from that, things started happening in a different way." From the melancholic chords of "Miracle Mind Program," to the twinkling "Gamma Gulch," to the hammering, hypnotic techno of "Feral Chime" on her latest EP, Persona Non Grata, it's clear Elian is now in her element making music.

Elian and Rhyw started Fever AM to have the freedom to put out music without buying into someone else's concept. There are plans to release other producers on the label, but the duo haven't yet found anyone who fits the sound they have in mind.

"We're taking it one release at a time right now and we're just waiting for the next one to jump out at us, whether it be someone we know already or a new face," Elian says. "We're juggling a lot of things as well. It's important for me to contribute. Creating a label is a way of promoting people, and doing parties is a way of contributing to the community and sustaining it—providing DJs with gigs, giving the crowd the opportunity to see someone they wouldn't otherwise."

Elian has a sharp awareness and enthusiasm for supporting newer artists as well as paying respect to the people who have shaped dance music's history. She's lived through many of dance music's cycles in the past two decades—trance in Tel Aviv, the rave scene in LA, minimal in Berlin. Electro is in the midst of its own cycle and with Mor Elian's idiosyncratic take on it delving into "weirder and crazier" depths, she's becoming one of the genre's most exciting new artists.