Beautiful insanity

Berlin-based producer Lotic makes hard hitting and deconstructed IDM. In this genre, abrasive anxiety is balanced with cinematic beauty. On Power, Lotic improves on the dark constrained glitch beats with a focus on song structure and flow. Lotic delivers an unnerving, yet groovy album full of diverse sounds and off the wall percussion and like his influences SOPHIE, Arca and Death Grips, Lotic blurs the line between the weird, experimental and modern stylings of pop music. It takes a lot of creativity and technical ability to pull off an album like Power, and like any good piece of art you can feel Lotic’s mindset and emotional state through anxious hustling grooves, somber synth textures and an atmospheric air of dangerous vulnerability. 

Power begins with the slow, beautiful and eerie “Love and the Light.” This track features heavenly instrumentation, bright synth bells and choirs float above glitchy effects industrial percussion. “Hunted” starts and ends with an unsettling whispered vocal loop while frantic stuttering drums hustle through hard bass hits and metallic percussive pops. Musically, this track is a banger and the schizophrenic vocal loops add to the insanity. “Bulletproof” features a wonky percussive beat, stretched samples and vocal chops that add and air of bizarre fun. The vocals at the end give the track a braggadocios modern trap flavor while the effects keep things weird.

“Distribution of Care’’ is a highlight, the bass drops hit hard against a big lumbering groove and dramatic strings give track some melodic grandeur and narrative focus. Tracks like “The Warp and the Weft” showcase Lotic’s excellent drum programming and his ability to manipulate pieces of audio and turn them into instruments. On the strange and beautiful “Fragility,” bright somber synths echo around what sound like a car swerving over and over again at warp speed. “Nerve” is okay, but Lotic’s heavily processed vocals can’t save him from sounding awkward and clunky while rapping and singing. This might be on purpose, but it could have been better executed. Another highlight, “Power” features an ear pleasing mix of frantic drumming and glitchy synth insanity.

Lotic tells somber and vivid stories with his brand of dark glitchy electronic music. Much of Power is an accessible yet surprisingly experimental journey. Lotic does a good job of translating his pain and suffering into music and while Lotic’s vocal ability falls short on a couple tracks, he delivers an excellently produced IDM album that deserves attention.