Lotic has announced the release of their debut album, Power, due for release on July 13th via Tri Angle Records. It is 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 its 11 songs, Lotic stretches their wings into unexpected new spaces, both compositionally, and, for the first time, vocally.
“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. The album artwork was shot my acclaimed director and photographer Matt Lambert, styled by Rich Aybar and features Lotic wearing clothes designed by Iris Van Herpen. Per a recent announcement, Lotic’s pronouns are they/them.
Lotic has shared the first track “Hunted” (listen below) with the following quote:
“brown skin, masculine frame
head’s a target
actin’ real feminine
make ’em vomit”
Power artwork & tracklist:
1. Love and Light
2. Hunted (Soundcloud)
3. Bulletproof
4. Distribution of Care
5. The Warp and the Weft
6. Resilience
7. Fragility
8. Nerve
9. Heart
10. Power
11. Solace