- Erika's first solo LP in a decade is Detroit techno and electro at its most elemental.
- There are many stories surrounding Detroit's Interdimensional Transmissions crew, but the most unlikely is also probably the most important: how the label unwittingly scored a smash with the 1998 release of I-F's "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass." The track was unknowingly prescient, with its soon-to-be-zeitgeist aesthetic combining electro drum programming with punk propulsion. It anticipated the whole electroclash thing, and put the fledgling Detroit label, founded by Brendan Gillen but run with Ectomorph bandmate Erika Sherman since '97, on the map, catapulting its surrounding artists onto a much larger global stage.
This brush with the nighttime glitterati is counter to the ethos that both Sherman and Gillen had cultivated in the Midwest underground. For Sherman, the jetsetting stardom didn't sit well, as she told Will Lynch in 2015: "We kind of stopped at that point." Lucky for us, this didn't mean that Sherman quit music. If anything, she doubled down, focusing even more on the mechanics of her craft, whether through parties in Detroit, her now-defunct 24-hour radio station or playing at global techno venues like Labyrinth and Berghain. Sherman's own releases, however, have been few and far between, with only a trickle of records over the past two decades. This makes Anevite Void an unexpected treasure trove. Her first LP in a decade, it's a crystalline vision of Detroit electro and techno at its most minimal and understated, but also its most wondrous and moving.
The music on Anevite Void is a masterful blend of icy austerity and emotional warmth, a format we first heard on Sherman's 2013 debut, Hexagon Cloud. But now it's more ascetic, yet even more complex. Take "Obsidian Sunset." The melody is whimsical, but the syncopated rhythm and heavy bass womps make it sound like Hansel and Gratel have stumbled into a post-apocalyptic rave. And on "Anion," Sherman lays into her 808s for one of the record's rowdiest electro rhythms, but then she treats us to a chirping IDM-like melody that could give ambient techno pioneer John Beltran a run for his money. There are still pockets of club weaponry, like on "Desert Red," where hi-hats whip over a sci-fi melody. And I'm sure whoever is playing No Way Back at 4 AM this year will have "Crystal Circuits" on their USB. But the focus isn't on big moments. It's about refining the subtle elements that constitute a classic electro or techno track.
Anevite Void is, in other words, a reaffirmation of the genres Sherman loves in their most fundamental forms. "Some huge part of this culture has transformed from an alternative—a form of resistance—to a giant economic machine, and that machine just wants to grow and grow, unchecked, feeding on its parents and siblings to become larger," Sherman once told an interviewer. "To keep the true spirit and meaning of this culture alive, we have to check this machine. Preserving and spreading knowledge, and remaining grounded in history, are key to this." Anevite Void is indeed grounded in history—this is dance music written by a true classicist—but it doesn't mean that she opts for nostalgia. Sherman's tracks still sound like something beamed back to us from the future.
Tracklist01. Emergency Shutdown
02. Opal Haze
03. Obsidian Sunset
04. Star Line Down
05. Anion
06. Desert Red
07. Crystal Circuits
08. Tomorrow's Fires
09. Dirt Breather
10. Wandering Mountain