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Water

by Lotic

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    7.6 - Pitchfork
    Bandcamp - Album of the Day
    9/10 - Loud and Quiet
    8/10 – Uncut


    Written mainly at Soundcloud Studio Berlin.
    Mixed by Jason Agel.
    Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Metropolis, London.
    Photography by Matt Lambert.
    Design by Marwan Kaabour.
    Manufactured at optimal media, Germany.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Water via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 500  94 remaining
    Purchasable with gift card

      £22 GBP or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    140gram BLUE MARBLED VINYL
    Die Cut Sleeve / Gold Foil Embossed
    Download card inside

    Written mainly at Soundcloud Studio Berlin.
    Mixed by Jason Agel.
    Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Metropolis, London.
    Photography by Matt Lambert.
    Design by Marwan Kaabour.
    Manufactured at optimal media, Germany.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Water via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      £18 GBP or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Water via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      £10 GBP or more 

     

1.
Wet 03:41
2.
sound the sirens my body's writhing i need to see you feel you, taste you, reel you in whisper in my ear baby, please come near just slide inside make me feel alright e- mer- gen- cy! please fuck me? tangled up in your body i ain't thinkin' bout nobody but me and you in this bedroom baby tell me what to do to please you to make you mine to please you to make you mine e- mer- gen- cy! please fuck me?
3.
come unto me come unto me i see you, you see me let's just be i want your comfort need your cute embrace come unto me stroking your nape breathing you in making sure you'll never want to leave me seeing you fully hear you entirely need you to know i love you truly, deeply just the way i know you love me we got this i promise, babe come unto me
4.
5.
Always You 04:29
i know I’ve tried to move on, to be strong but it's always you always you always you! you just feel so good i wish i could lie here, forever it's always you always you!
6.
Apart 06:06
it's so hard to be apart missing you and longing to unite with you.... unite with you what do we do to continue? protect our love? to stay above? to stay in love? it's so hard to be apart missing you and longing to unite with you.... unite with you distance has always been kind, a friend she's helped us thru a lot i almost forgot but i'll step back and act with tact... if you need space i'll go at your pace! it's so hard to be apart missing you and longing to unite with you.... unite with you
7.
A Plea 03:22
do you even see me do you even care do you even love me of this i'm unaware been here few times before hard to care anymore do you even see me.... one foot is out the door i still care but do you? cause i got a new boo... do you even see me or you just gon do you? still love you don't know why awaiting a new lie do you even see me... i'm leaving please believe me i'll still be here when needed when feeling less depleted
8.
Oblivious 06:40
couldn't you feel? couldn't you feel my heart reaching out for you? couldn't you feel? im- impatiently waiting to be seen by you feel like a fucking fool don't know what else to do gave my all to you you ain't got a clue made myself smaller for you couldn't you feel? couldn't you feel my heart reaching out for you? couldn't you feel? are you so? are you so oblivious? couldn't you feel?
9.
Diamond 08:41
i never needed to be to be your your perfect diamond stretched too thin pushed too far pressure, pressure made to feel like a burden pressure, pressure always second-guessing intuition why do i allow all of this pressure? i'm a treasure but not a trophy know it's hard for you to love me but i'm just a girl who happens to love a twirl take it or leave it why do i allow all of this pressure? i never wanted to be to be your your perfect diamond i release you my spirit told me to but know that i love you and cherish the memories, too this entanglement has expired but i hope you know that this i admired why do i allow of this pressure?

about

J’Kerian Morgan, the artist known as Lotic, says of her second album Water: “This is the record I always wanted to write. This feels like my arrival as an artist.”


The last decade has irrevocably shaped the arc of Morgan’s life. The liberatory impact she has had on experimental club music as Lotic (meaning, “Of, relating to, or living in flowing water”) has in turn folded back into her creative practice, revealing a more finely-realised and intriguing evolution with each subsequent iteration. A decade bookended by chapters in Texas, USA and Berlin, Germany, saw Lotic navigate personal hardship and upheaval while garnering acclaim for an expansive production style; unpredictably nestling searing knife’s-edge sound design next to pop music hooks, hypnotic vocal reverie and the lineage of Black club cultures.


From studying film and electronic music at the University of Texas at Austin, she released her darkly complex debut EP More Than Friends, in 2011. Upon her move to Berlin in 2012, Lotic’s freewheeling sound aesthetic quickly cut a swath through the city’s nightlife with resident DJ sets at Berghain and Chesters nightclubs. A series of well-received mixtapes followed and she soon attracted the attention of avant-garde iconoclast Björk, who stated, “Lotic is one of the fiercest performer DJs I have ever heard.” This led to collaborative work on remixes for the Icelandic artists’s Vulnicura album and an invitation to open her 2015 Berlin concert.


Lotic’s debut album Power, released in 2018, transformed feelings of fear and vulnerability into a consolidation of personal agency and strength. The record was praised for its polished production style and its narrative reflections on race, sexuality, and gender.


Lotic’s latest release, the bewitchingly intimate 2021 album Water, for Houndstooth, is a stunning revelation; a tender meditation on love’s losses and lifeforce, timelines, bloodlines and resilience. Arriving at the end of a period Morgan recalls as, “having to be adaptable, while being dragged through the trenches,” Water adds the haunting quality of siren song to a career already marked by its engaging emotionality.


To arrive at Water meant to become like water. Lotic dedicated two years to a deep, intentional process of surrendering to softness, welcoming impermanence, embracing intimate relationships with her environment and self. Yet, to embrace vulnerability is to welcome its totality. Water heals, and it harms. It can sharpen, scald or silently consume. Water is a conduit for human corruption, such as the wrenching cruelty of forced Middle Passage crossings, yet water remains a site of ritual and absolution, a source of constant renewal.


Through Water, Lotic acknowledges, heals and exalts relationships that are complex and nonlinear. With nine distinct compositions she gently collapses concepts of time and selfhood, meeting the eyes of the ancestral, the shadowed, the total and part selves with a steady loving gaze, locked in an infinite reflection.


“Wet” is a feat of non-lyrical vocal expression, luxuriating in its own operatic romanticism. “Emergency” shifts gears with quickened drums, a pulsing rhythm and breathless insatiability, reinforced by the upper-register delivery of the plea, “Sound the sirens / My body's writhing / I need to see you / Feel you, taste you, reel you in.” “Come Unto Me” is the synchronous telling of a cherished partnership and a lament for its loss through time. It relishes in connectedness with the lyrics, “Seeing you fully hear you entirely / Need you to know i / Love you truly, deeply,” while foreshadowing the inevitable need to soon turn those sentiments towards herself. Its bittersweetness reflects in the unlikely union of sludgy, bodeful pads and tones and delicate, celestial chimes.


“Changes” is a spoken testimony to unequivocal Black queerness, and features the voice of Julius Errol Flynn. “Always You” is a slow, deliberate mantra, laid meditatively over an accelerated double-time tempo, professing, over and over, to forever choose the object of its desire. “Apart” addresses the sweet agony of separation, with skittering electronic pulses and plucking of harp strings gently guide Lotic’s angelic voice further upwards towards a heavenly ascent.


The album’s third begins with sown seeds of discord in “A Plea.” Thunderous single notes hum like drones, falling away into a racing, skipping heartbeat, while demanding with a hot whisper to know “Do you even see me? Do you even care? Do you even love me? Of this I'm unaware.” “Oblivious” emerges as a solo voice under a spotlight, but the scene soon reveals an expanse of unsteady, inhospitable terrain. A devastating dressing-down ensues with Lotic’s voice hovering with clarity and shifting glimpses of razor sharpness, as she addresses the protagonist with her scars and righteous indignation. The haunting, swooping, intuitive harmonies of “Diamond” unites and concludes the context and subtext of Water, with a fitting final metaphor and a soaring musical peak. Here the beauty and follies of the human condition, the intoxicating and excruciating nature of love, and the crushing realites of a life lived can indeed forge something even more exquisitely, artfully, uniquely beautiful than expected.


Water is the complete embodiment of Lotic’s dedicated praxis; one which unpicks a certain narrative about corrosive angst and outlier musicality. Within Water, Lotic’s compositions curve around the sub bass of an 808, with vibrations and hums superseding clarity and separation. Drums are softened to a powdery warmth, and each chapter unfolds as a symphonic sound poem. Heartful depictions of love relationships to others and the self, to ancestry and identity, are marked by stunning new expressions of ecstatic voices.

credits

released October 29, 2021

Lotic,

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Lotic Berlin, Germany

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