Lotic - Power (Color Vinyl)

Power is the debut album from Lotic, an expansive exploration of the many ways in which power can be expressed and experienced. Those familiar with Lotic's two 2015 EPs - Heterocetera (Tri Angle) and Agitations (Janus) - will trace a warm-blooded evolution: Power retains the Berlin musician's inquisitive intensity, while mining the depths of nuance like never before. Across it's 11 songs, Lotic stretches their wings into unexpected new spaces, both compositionally, and, for the first time, vocally. "Hunted," quoted above, returns the colonial gaze with an arched eyebrow and a hushed chant in one of the more pop-leaning moments on the album. "Distribution of Care" pulls Lotic's rigorous club aesthetic into a symphonic context, pairing strings and drums in a wordless questioning of society's priorities. The playful "Nerve" serves up an icey hip-hop beat over which they invoke their H-Town roots while issuing a warning. And, of course, there couldn't be a sonic exposition of power without it's most generous manifestation: "Heart" is a love ballad that finds Lotic and NON Records's Moro, the album's sole guest, trading vulnerable verses. "It originally started as an empowerment album," says Lotic. "I felt that I needed to offer something outside of myself, as sort of a healing moment. And then I lost my apartment. Mentally, I could only work on music once every three months or something. The question of what would be empowering - the answer to that changed so often over a two-year period. I had to figure out who I was all over again. With this record, I went back and incorporated all of my musical selves." Lotic was born in Houston, and studied electronic music composition and saxophone at university. They moved to Berlin in 2012, where they helped form the Janus club collective. In 2015, they were commissioned to create two remixes for Björk's Vulnicura, and subsequently were invited to be the opening act at her live show in Berlin. Power is grounded by Lotic's love of Texan marching bands - "Beats and drumming are so integral to black culture," they explain - and was in part inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between The World And Me. Per a recent announcement, Lotic's pronouns are they/them.