- Midwest house as seen through the Swedish looking glass.
- There's something uncanny about Detroit via Baltimore producer LADYMONIX's latest EP, Welcome 2 My House. On paper, she's working with the same classic American house templates she perfected on previous EPs—disco vocals, crisp drums, driving basslines, smoky chords—but something has changed. Take the deceptively titled "So Sweet." A wailing disco diva goes to town over a vintage closed hi-hat pattern—business as usual. But the chords are compressed to the point of claustrophobia, building up to a breakdown where the vocal a capella is chopped up and laid slightly off-tempo over the kick. This isn't hands-in-the-air as much as it is hair-tingling-on-your neck. It's a refreshing new take on vintage American sounds that LADYMONIX explores across the entirety of Welcome 2 My House.
The title track is another excellent example of this new tension. At face value, it could easily be a vintage Sound Signature track, but then she introduces a hi-hat that sounds like it's been sampled from a barrage of metal garbage cans falling down on a hill. She also flirts with techno. On "In a Daze," the 909s are punchy and forceful as she builds the track around a haunted organ refrain issuing its final SOS into the void. To double down on the sinking feeling, she keeps layering synth bleeps and arpeggios that up the anxiety.
Welcome 2 My House lands on the esteemed Swedish label Studio Barnhus, a sign that she's dedicated to keeping it weird (in a good way). Her previous releases have all come through her own Frizner Electric imprint, but now she's spreading her wings with the Swedes—an exciting endorsement. Axel Boman, Kornél Kovács and Petter Nordkvist have an ear for finding producers who make strange, spacey house equal parts wonky and warm (I'm thinking here of their two most recent superstars, Bella Boo and Sofia Kourtesis). Welcome 2 My House sits up there with the best of the label's catalog, and is a promising take off as LADYMONIX enters the Studio Barnhus orbit.
Tracklist01. In A Daze
02. So Sweet
03. Welcome 2 My House
04. Desire