I’m really stoked on videogamemusic right now, initially because I’m a sucker for bold, screen-printed composite artwork (on “super nice paper”), but also when I realized it was somewhat unique their latest batch of tapes features a majority of female producers. Let’s not dwell on how women are underrepresented and overly commodified by electronic music labels and festivals, and instead focus on why Nadia Khan’s Deep Court is a particularly exciting slice from the batch. While UMFANG and M/M created more beat-orientated work, Khan’s tape is sparse and lean, like a firery vein of iron cutting across miles of wintergreen tundra.
Deep Court is more concentrated than Open Interior, and also mostly abandons the sparse beats that Khan’s previous tape used to maintain structure. I think the songs are better off without. The shock of cold, skeletal loops held aloft by invisibile claws is burns off into a meditative haze, and Khan is careful in her instrument selection to glean a sense of occult exoticism from the murk. “She slept here” is a heartfelt track — one with the greatest focus on the expressive properties of loops and repetition. That repetition is the best part the tape, and it pervades each track like quintessential zeotropic horse, galloping into infinity.
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• Nadia Khan: https://soundcloud.com/nadia-khan-10
• videogamemusic: http://videogamemusic01.bandcamp.com/releases