Lady Blacktronika has doubled down on her mastery of the Detroit Beatdown sound with her latest album, Drum Control. The entire EP, out on Allergy Season, is an ode to the ultra-smooth and laid-back deep house for which she’s become a paragon.
“Can I Turn Too,” features the hallmarks of the Bay Area-born artist’s trademark sound. It opens with a tuned-down soul sample, almost foreboding, and all at once, a sultry wall of Rhodes offers a stark juxtaposition that doesn’t feel out of place in a year like 2020. “Can I Turn Too” is really a marriage of the deep house cuts that brought her into production and the more hard-edged Berlin sound that she’s picked up while living there. The synths and bass line are bright and airy, but the beats are heavy and throbbing.
Lady Blacktronika’s music runs through waves of darkness and light. It’s music indicative of a life that has been met with intense joy and extraordinary heartache and austerity. She was born and raised in San Jose, California, and throughout her life, she has experienced periods of drug addiction, homelessness, and prostitution. Through it all, her music was a solace.
In the late 90’s Lady Blacktronika got her start lending her vocals to numerous house records that never saw the light of day. After years of feeling left out of the writing process, her own smoothed-out deep house cuts were discovered by Mike Huckaby on MySpace, and he introduced her to the world in 2007.
“Can I Turn Too” and the entire Drum Control EP are available via BandCamp.
