- Using house and techno as a canvas for social and personal commentary, the Chicago producer puts together 40 minutes of brilliant, often touching dance music.
- A cyclorama is a stage backdrop, often curved or contoured, designed to give a theatre production a sense of reality, depth or space within the rigid physical format of a play. Ariel Zetina, a Chicago-based DJ, smartbar resident and former theatre producer, knows all about adding depth and feeling to one of the most enduring forms of entertainment. And she doesn't just do it there. With her records, Zetina brings deep meaning and emotion to dance music, borne from her experiences and growth as a Belizean trans woman. It's not just in the background—her tracks address these topics head-on. 2020's MUAs At The End Of The World, for example, featured ruminations on the role of makeup in a trans woman's everyday life. With her debut album, Cyclorama, Zetina takes her mission a step further, using house and techno as a cyclorama for brash statements of affirmation, vulnerability and defiance, and—of course—well-produced dance music.
Cyclorama begins with its title track, fizzy, fluttering piano house that brims with hope. It's with "Have You Ever" that more nuanced emotions start to surface. One of the LP's many collaborations, this one features Cae Monāe, who coos, "Have you ever been with a girl like me before?" Delivered with a mixture of seduction and nerve over a pounding techno beat, the phrase feels confrontational. But it's also sensitive, underlining both the uncertainty and apprehensiveness some trans women experience while dating, and the insecurities and fears of the men who date them. ("Cae and I—and many trans women–have been in so many situations where society tells cis men they cannot be with trans women and this explores that and gives power to all trans women in this situation," Zetina says in the album's notes.) These complex feelings are mirrored by the track itself, which uses the physical properties of techno to communicate tension and release, confidence and retreat, until the refrain turns to "Spell my name, motherfucker"—a triumphant shout of self-identity. It's a masterpiece in four minutes.
From the album art to the production credits, Zetina surrounds herself with fellow trans women artists who convey power in numbers and shared experiences. "Gemstone," with Mia Arevalo, is a tender and personal reflection on transitioning, with a smartly multi-tracked vocal—lower speak-singing overlaid with high-pitched trilling—over a pumping house beat. Bored Lord, another artist who adeptly laces humour with raw power like Zetina, shows up to add her signature junglist touch to the refined Chicago house of "Smoke Machine." It moves with exactly the kind of theatre-informed push-and-pull between feelings and sounds that helps Cyclorama punch above its 40-minute weight.
The narratives weaved into Zetina's dance music hit hard because they capture a vast spectrum of human emotion and trans experience. Take "Slab Of Meat," the album's most visceral techno track, where she speaks in a pitched-down monotone about the dehumanisation she regularly experiences: "Feeling like a slab of meat / Forgotten in the freezer / Are you gonna thaw me or are you gonna leave me? / Throw me on the counter babe and pound me with a cleaver." It's powerful and over the top, especially when Zetina accuses her potential paramour of "wasting" the meat, turning a piece of incisive social commentary into an absurd, Green Velvet-style psychodrama.
These kinds of cheeky plot twists add whiplashed thrills to each new listen of Cyclorama. The tracks veer from tender to snarling. Every time there's a moment of darkness on the album there's a moment of levity to follow it, and vice versa. "Slab Of Meat," for example, is sandwiched in between the lovely "Birdflite Tonight"—a collaboration with Lisbon producer Violet focused around an elegant harp riff—and the blissed-out "Smoke Machine." The record drops the curtain with "Tropical Depression," the longest and most dynamic track, which is a reflection on Zetina's upbringing in Belize. It's a sardonic take on the idea of being depressed in what most people see as a warm and sunny paradise.
Clever without being overwrought, intuitively emotional and, perhaps most importantly, never undermining the fundamentals of dance music, Cyclorama is the rare techno and house full-length that takes to the album format to deal with headier themes and ideas than you could expect on a 12-inch. Trans artists, especially trans women, are more visible than ever in the electronic music scene—think Eris Drew, Bored Lord, Jasmine Infiniti—and that visibility comes with ups and downs, danger alongside success and self-fulfilment. Cyclorama, like a brilliant black box play, explores these feelings with uncommon honesty, clarity and directness. The rest of us are lucky to hear it.
Tracklist01. Cyclorama
02. Have You Ever feat. Cae Monāe
03. Smooch Track feat. DANNN
04. Chasers
05. Birdflite Tonite feat. Violet
06. Slab of Meat
07. Smoke Machine feat. Bored Lord
08. Gemstone feat. Mia Arevalo
09. Tropical Depression