For her Reality combine ok means holds us at a continuing simmer, slick with sweat and dense with smog, burbling between unease and launch, murk and steam.
Like so many people throughout more and more cursed occasions, ok means is feeling unsettled. This isn’t solely new territory for the Stockholm-born, Bristol-based DJ, the truth is, by her personal admission, the unsettling is usually what most attracts her to music. “I prefer to be weirded out,” she advised Worldwide Orange, “I prefer it when [music] takes you aback and perhaps makes you are feeling such as you need to go right into a bizarre frog stance and do a bizarre dance.” Rising up enjoying piano and violin whereas concurrently obsessing over a gentle food regimen of online game soundtracks, this formative love affair with video video games shortly overwhelmed her extra classical influences, leading to years spent performing iconic scores from Last Fantasy and Chrono Set off on the piano. Her appreciation for the virtuosic financial system of those compositions morphed right into a profound love of the uncooked power and deadly performance of footwork and juke, the music that obtained her into mixing within the first place and, she says, “sits closest to my coronary heart.” Add the sonic textures of whirring modems, dial-up tones and error message glitch that accompanies her different position as a pc scientist, in addition to many hours of on-air experimentation for Noods, Netil and Rinse FM, and also you’re midway to the singular area her ear occupies.
“Mixes generally symbolize a number of issues for me; the place my head’s presently at, my emotional state, and extra merely what I’m having fun with in the intervening time,” says ok means. “My life has been in a state of flux lately. There’s been a whole lot of feelings flying about, numerous practice rides, an impending home transfer. I moved to Bristol early this 12 months too, which has been a really appreciated change. I suppose that’s form of the theme of my life proper now – shit is transferring in all shapes and types, typically quick, typically gradual. Emotionally, I feel this combine represents the repercussions of this, the place I’m channeling the entire organised and disorganised chaos I’m presently experiencing.” Discovering unstoppable momentum in mentioned chaos, her Reality combine pitches us right into a irresistible descent via high-pressure industrial throb, dread techno, ghost footwork, deepest, darkest dub and every little thing in-between, the radioactive thrash of breakbeats and the gnarled snarl of snares suspended on cacophonous bass rattle, paired-back moments embellishing gradual skeletal pulse with wiggy vocal samples, sombre synthesis and low-end ooze, all permeated with a gentle creep of lysergic stress.
Slick with sweat and dense with smog, ok means holds us at a continuing simmer, burbling between unease and launch, murk and steam. “Musically, I drew a whole lot of inspiration from a closing set I lately performed at Venue MOT, following after Shackleton and Al Wootton,” she continues. “I typically play closing units – there’s normally a mode of closing set I’m drawn to, however I’ll all the time attempt to play to the context. This combine may be very a lot my excellent closing set when it comes to how the power and sounds flows all through it, one I’d need to play late at night time in a darkish, closely smoke-filled room. Beginning issues actual intense, permitting issues to descend right into a clattery percussive hellhole, going deeper, slowly popping out of the opposite finish, getting trippier, extra grungy, extra amphibian, ultimately ascending into a loud, guttural climax – issues are noisy, hazy – then questioning, how did I find yourself right here?” Unfurling with exploratory function, every weighty surge and masterful retreat dropping the underside out of your abdomen, that is music to shut your eyes and get unfastened to, the sound of transferring via dissociation and displacement whereas retaining your head simply above the froth and slime of the swamp. No tracklist, no life jacket, no security, untethered and tapped in, you’re going to must go together with ok means for this one. Belief us, it’s greater than price it.
You could find ok means on Instagram. Tune in to ok means at Rinse FM, Noods Radio and Avant Rubbish, her present with DJ ojo for Netil Radio.
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