To wind up 2020, Allergy Season is excited to share Drum Control – 6 tracks of fierce, forceful house (and beyond) from Lady Blacktronika. 

Connecting the dots between a brand of ultra-deep house first mastered in the early 2000’s on the West Coast, and tough-as-nail techno transmitted from Berlin under her Femanyst alias, Drum Control is a jump forward for Lady Blacktronika. Hers is a sound sketched out over dozens of releases, now etched into stone: emotive singing and unyielding sample mastery, channeled through raw emotional house, disco and techno.  “Can I Turn Too” leads us off with a step out of the darkness and into the light; all glint and glimmer, with one final glance over the shoulder before moving on. “Drum Control” is pure slow-cooked funk, warm and powerful with a lysergic swirl to it, a callback to Lady Blacktronika’s storied history cutting and chopping extended disco edits.

Extended is the byword for the EP’s core: over nearly 7 minutes “Female Troubles” plays out a back-and-forth between the mantras of “you give good love” and “I still want you to call me,” an opus to the “dilemmas of womanhood.” She runs it even longer on “Tootfairy Noises,” keeping the pressure at a simmer, leading a bass-heavy, whistle-driven carnival of the damned that can step toe-to-toe with any psychedelic techno without breaking a sweat.

If the rasping open hi-hats and earworm chords of “Shoulda Known Better 2018” make you wish the song would roll on endlessly, you’re in luck. Lady Blacktronika doubles down with an infectious “Reverso” twist, bringing the beat back one last time with a harder edge and hypnotic crunch. Drum Control is a reinforcement of what some know, and more are due to find out: that after all these years, we’re still living in A Blacktronika World. 

Written & Produced by Akua Marcelle Grant
Mastered by Kevin McHugh @ Valence
Art by Bad M.

Buy on Bandcamp

Lady Blacktronika - Drum Control - ALLERGYFREE018

Drum Control

Shoulda Known Better (Reverso Edit)

Shoulda Known Better

Tootfairy Noises

Female Troubles

Can I Turn Too

Record label run by Physical Therapy. Genre-free, highly emotive dance music.