- The Montreal mainstay perfects her hedonistic spin on progressive house with a dash of downtempo and UK techno.
- Over the past year, Montreal's Maara-Louisa Dunbar has been building her own queer paradise. As she describes her music to me over Zoom, she is intent on capturing "that lezzie energy, that horse energy" with big BPMs and bigger melodies. The characters and textures of her world have started to take shape over the course of her past three 12-inches. Her matriarchy is ruled by a feminine divine who lords over illicit plums that tempt like the apples of Eden, but instead of banishment, having a bite is a necessary indulgence. As the vocal whispers on "Plum Plum Paradise," the idea is to "allow yourself inside." On her latest release, Goddess Within, Dunbar lets us all inside with a record that offers her most robust cosmology to date, exploring UK techno, broken downtempo, and, of course, plenty of progressive house and trance.
Dunbar's records typically come with evocative song titles and breathy, gated vocal samples that seem to drip sexuality (or intended to make you blush if you accidentally move out of Bluetooth range in a public place). But just as important are the wet wobbles of her progressive-house indebted synth styling. Last year's Potion Activated perfected this formula over pounding techno, and on the A-side of Goddess Within, she revisits those tropes but adds rhythms that are more skewed and staggered. "Mommy's In Trouble" ventures into Livity Sound territory thanks to the weighty sub-bass and broken drum patterns that pan across the stereo field. The other highlight leaves the darkroom for Burning Man sunrise with the arms-in-the-air trance euphoria of "Lezzies In A Jacuzzi."
Writing fast techno with trance and prog references is certainly not groundbreaking. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that we've reached something of a saturation point. Dunbar avoids gimmickry by engaging in a direct conversation at both a local and global level. She's very much a product of her Montreal home, where artists like Priori and Ex-Terrestrial have already been pushing New Age and trance (not to mention DJs like Lis Dalton, who performs with Dunbar in the duo Freaky Gurlz). But Dunbar is also in dialogue with artists like Roza Terenzi and Byron Yeates, who have made the cheesy melodies and sometimes cringe vocals of prog sound both underground and sexy again. It's fitting that Yeates' Radiant Love label is releasing Goddess Within, solidifying a commitment to building a transatlantic hedonistic paradise.
Tracklist01. Goddess Within (Give It To Me Daddy)
02. Mommy's In Trouble
03. Plum Plum Paradise
04. Lezzies In A Jacuzzi