Anz is hilarious. When we spoke in October, the DJ and producer identified the groove in her lounge sofa as her studio. She dangled a rabbit onesie, grey slippers and black bonnet in front of the camera—her uniform. "These things aren't hard and fast, they're not the rule, but my slippers, my onesie, my sofa and my bonnet, that's my studio," she said. Anz is also slightly obsessive. Her collection of hand fans and colour-coded wall of nail polish tell me so—as do her annual dub mixes, now a fixed event in the electronic music calendar.

"I've got this really big obsession with archiving things, and legacy," she explained. "I don't know if it's my aim necessarily, but I feel that archiving is so important because who else is going to tell the story? Who else is gonna do it for you? I'm obsessed with making sure that I can say, 'I was here too,' you know?"

Last year, Anz, who is based in Manchester, knocked out 74 fresh tracks, resulting in one of 2020's standout mixes. She also dropped an EP on Hessle Audio. If she was worried about being forgotten, she needn't be: Anz is officially part of the canon.

She smiles easy, laughs often and emanates warmth through the screen. She's quick to self-deprecate and doesn't quite trust in the attention she's garnered or that it'll remain. At one point, she burst out laughing. "I've basically been trying to say the same thing for like the past five years!" What, I asked, did she mean? "I guess I've noticed certain motifs and percussive habits. I've become more fluent in what I'm trying to say, but the message, or what I've been trying to do, has been the same."

Anz was always interested in musical arrangement, having studied the subject at school, but it was only in 2015 that she began publishing work. Some associate her with the new garage generation, but her track structures and rhythms defy clean-cut genre classifications. There's a random cohesiveness to the way she inhabits the UK soundscape. You hear this in 2017's "No Harm" and in her most recent annual mix, which has had the best reception of the whole series. "It's like sitting and playing your demos on a loop in an empty room," she said, "and gradually people pop in and quietly listen and go 'ah I like this one!' Production mixes are intensely personal."

Spring/Summer Dubs 2020 dropped in June, precipitating a new wave of followers and landing Anz on a number of best-of lists (including RA's). The mix was so popular that she opted for a cassette release in November, each case containing a custom-made hand fan. As with the previous editions, the four-month process was a blurry one, which Anz puts down to the erratic rhythms of her daily life. "They're made in such an intense daze, hazy, coffee-fuelled all-nighters, working around day jobs and so on," she explained, comparing the mixes to scrapbooks.

The 2020 mix lifts generously from the '90s, sampling the works of artists as varied as Soul For Real, Livin' Joy, Masters At Work and Fatboy Slim. Anz builds brief scenes with solid UK colour. Rave, drum & bass, 2-step and bassline all feature, but never in a continuous line. The mix reads more like a series of vignettes, capturing fleeting rhythmic moments before moving onto the next. At the time of writing, it's had more than 44,000 plays on SoundCloud.

Last year's Loos In Twos (NRG) EP on Hessle Audio is similarly roving. The title track opens on a slow 3-2 clave rhythm before morphing into a spacey breakbeat with reverb snares and rave siren calls. "Gary Mission" is a mini-mix itself, adding and subtracting percussive elements in quick succession before dropping a warbling bass at the halfway mark. Listening to Anz is like discovering latent sonic constellations: the sounds were always there, just waiting for someone to make the connection.

London born and raised—with a short stint in Surrey—Anz headed north for her undergraduate degree. She cut her teeth on the rave scene and built a trusted circle of friends in Liverpool, where she was studying, but it was with Manchester that she established an authentic musical affinity. An impromptu day trip sealed the deal. She was sat on a bench by the canals when she decided to call Manchester home. "We were listening to dubstep off the phone speakers, just staring into the canal and I just thought, 'This is me, this is it,'" she said.

"I went back to Liverpool and I was like, 'Right I need to find a job in Manchester to try and make sure we've got some reason to bring us over there,'" she continued. "As soon as I got off the train, when I came for a job interview, I looked around and saw all these different faces and I just thought, 'This is better, this feels better.'" She was producing in her flat a year later.

In her family home, where boogie and funk chimed effortlessly with Afrobeat and Ghanian highlife, Anz was drawn to four-part harmony bands and lush basslines—think Dynasty and Earth, Wind & Fire. Her parents carried the familiar sounds of their Nigerian youth over to the UK, bringing a sense of home to their new surroundings. After a series of moves, the family settled outside of London, where things felt a little less like home.

"I didn't really clock on to exactly why I felt uncomfortable and why my parents really encouraged us to make friends with other black kids in the school," she said. "At the time it felt kind of corny, but I don't think I really got the weight of it and why they really encouraged it so much." It was in the quiet moments on the house computer, watching performances by the likes of The Prodigy, that Anz began imagining a new world of sound. By 2015 she was ready to share.

"I didn't really see production mixes all that often from my peers," she said, "and there were moments where I thought 'is this weird? Am I being extra?' But I just felt so compelled to document it all, including the wonky mixdowns and patchy blending. I just needed to try, and to document it, and it's ended up being a really affirming part of my process, for lots of different reasons."

Although Anz has always been prolific, the first UK lockdown precipitated an especially intense period. It's clear from our conversation that music has a certain grounding quality. "Whenever I'm feeling sad or upset, there's two ways it will go," she said. "I either completely disconnect, do something that brings me comfort without any kind of expectation, or I start a project. There's no real in-between. It's overdrive or absolutely nothing."

She takes a similar approach to DJing, bringing a few tracks to frame the evening and leaving the rest up to the crowd. "I try to put myself in their shoes, because I've been in their shoes so often," she said. "If I've just had a super-melodic, airy fairy tune, I'd probably want a little bit of pressure, something a little bit tougher. It's a conversation—people tell you if they don't like something, especially if they're moving to the smoking area."

There have been a number of international or high-profile gigs—Lady Gaga booked her for a Marsha P. Johnson Institute online fundraiser in June—but for Anz there's nothing like playing to a home crowd. She likens away-sets to delicate trust-building exercises, whereas in Manchester she's free to roam and hone in on sounds. "At home they understand the broader me, have heard me play in the same basement however many times," she said.

"I don't feel I need to be like, 'Oh, and by the way this and this and this is how we get to here.' They already know that, so I can go as mad, moody, dark or as ecstatic as I want to. They trust me with it." And what about her parents? What do they make of her musical evolution, and the decision to stay up north? "I played a gig for Gal-Dem at the Tate once and they came for that. I think it all kind of made sense—it wasn't a sweaty rave." She leaned into the camera and looked away, pensive. "Maybe I'm trying to do what they were doing at the time, find that comfort in home."