- A curious and liberating take on house music on Optimo's label.
- Around the corner from my place in London there's a social club that hosts movement classes—sessions where a DJ creates a soundscape for you to explore your "physical vocabulary" through "free improvised movement." You might roll your eyes, but this could just as well be a glorified pitch for a club night. So why is it happening in a social space? Do people not feel comfortable doing that in clubs anymore? Charlotte Bendiks' work inadvertently questions this. She calls her style body music—saying it's just as much about the physical movement as it is the audio in this interview—and on her latest EP, I'm Home, I'm OK, she makes use of a wealth of textures to divert you away from a familiar plodding house rhythm and into her dancing hinterland.
Bendiks knows a thing or two about creating alternative spaces to dance in. Growing up in Tromsø, one of the most northern towns in Norway, she got into producing techno well after most of the city's leading techno producers from the '80s and '90s had moved out. She found her community by helping out at what is now the celebrated Insomnia Festival and by starting her own illegal raves called Moist—a name which, as she says in the same Mixmag interview, is down to her rude north Norwegian sense of humour that loves how repulsed most people are by that word.
This dark humour and love of obscure sounds is what makes I'm Home, I'm OK so good. Every one of its tunes has something just slightly off about it. On the title track, it's the upbeat and light patter of the hand drums that come up against a rumbling stomach—or is it a panther growling? I can't tell. The electric guitar on "Leaving Diego" sounds like it's going up and down a heptatonic scale, which should give it a Middle Eastern twang, but the way it holds onto each chord is wistful and more like a Dire Straits riff. And "Steikesexual"'s wobbling synth lines, a common theme throughout the EP, start off as though they're heading for a euphoric finish but by the end they come off pretty menacing.
The EPs title echoes this ambiguity. I'm home, I'm OK is the familiar message that many feel compelled to send after a night out. Between leaving one space and arriving at the next there's a period where we're vulnerable and don't feel as safe as we once were. By throwing in all sorts of curveballs, Bendiks' body music becomes something you're both not sure how to dance to (what do you do for a belly rumble sound?) and something that's freeing to dance to (since there are no rules on how to dance to a belly rumble). In this way, it encourages spontaneous, improvised movement—the sort that I'd probably feel more comfortable exploring at my social club down the road than at a nightclub.
Tracklist01. I'm Home, I'm OK
02. Leaving Diego
03. Steikesexual