Wilted Woman’s early musical education was in the classical world, against whose strict codes of conduct she often chafed. This rebellious streak—or, as she put it, “the urge to [do] things wrong for no reason”—helps explain the music she makes now.
Her dance music has sharp elbows, its rich layering not inducing dance floor transportation so much as frazzled unease. Her debut on Alien Jams, which follows this spring’s breakout Diary Of A Woman on She Rocks!, is defined by this quality.
It’s a record of disorientating density, gut-lurching turns and synth interference that needles at the eardrums. Sometimes it’s awkward in a bad way: the brief closer, “It’s Easy,” is marred by an LFOed bass growl straight out of knock-off dubstep. But mostly, the Berlin-based American seems to know exactly where she’s going, even if it’s a discomfiting place. Sometimes initial momentum gets trapped in uncomfortable stasis. (Wilted Woman didn’t call her music “anxiety rhythm” for nothing.)
On “Heating Problem” this happens to doomy techno, while on “Bubbling Again” it’s to a lighter set of phasing arps and resonant-pitched percussion, which in anyone else’s hands would make for breezy house. The circa 140 BPM “LKA” doesn’t bottle it, instead gleefully overshooting dance floor psychedelia, landing in a pile-up of shrill arps and lurid effects.
“Meat” is the exception that proves the EP’s contrarian rule, a cosmic 90-BPM chugger that, rather than derailing, erupts in plumes of gorgeous crystalline melody.
