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Akoma
Barnes and Noble
Akoma
Current price: $17.99
Barnes and Noble
Akoma
Current price: $17.99
Size: CD
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's third studio album follows several years' worth of high-profile collaborations with contemporary dance groups, modern classical composers, visual artists, and fellow electronic visionaries including
,
, and the late
.
builds on all of her past achievements, incorporating every genre she's touched so far, stretching from experimental club sounds to a hybrid of traditional percussive rhythms and avant-garde composition. "Borealis" is
's second collaboration with
, following a rework of "Arisen My Senses" that was released in 2018. The grainy flutes and fragmented vocals are vaguely traceable as something
might have created, but they're thrown into
's vortex along with sharp spoken extracts similar to the horror movie samples on her first album. "Speed of Darkness" has a sort of time-shifting spaciousness that seems new to her work, and the futuristic synths and ever-evolving rhythms of tracks like "Iris" and "Auset" recall the still futuristic-sounding developments of atmospheric drum'n'bass and Detroit techno during the 1990s. "Auset" and "Open Canvas" also have a harder, more ravey edge to them than other
tracks. "Challenge (To Be Continued II)" chops up several different forms of percussion, from tabla-like drums and marching snares to trap beats, and the sparser "Eye Am" gets into a much deeper rhythmic zone, with interlocking patterns and exuberant shouts. "Grannie's Cherry Pie" is a sweet, nostalgic moment with a cheerful keyboard melody that could've been used in a rap radio hit from the 2000s. Other pieces on the album seem much more in line with
's work in the contemporary dance and classical worlds, particularly the scraping strings and obtuse chimes of "Summon," and the
collaboration "Sodalite," which rigorously matches their energy with the producer's complex beat sculpture. The album ends with "The Precision of Infinity," which makes sublime use of spiraling piano phrases played by
represents another impressive step in
's remarkable evolution as an artist. ~ Paul Simpson