Image by Seb JJ Peters
You should be excited by Saoirse. The London based DJ and producer is one who is charging forward into the future of electronic music, alongside similarly captivating and invigorating acts such as Sherelle and TSHA. This group of diverse, non-cis-male innovators are shattering the boundaries of the industry by playing by their own rules and creating from spaces of unapologetic queerness and otherness. What results are incredibly layered ideations of club music, formulated from personal experience and personal struggle yet still rooted firmly on the dance floor. This is very much a part of what Trust, Saoirse’s debut EP, aims to do. The EP is released by Saoirse’s own label of the same name, and both carry the name of a club night that the Irish native is known for hosting.
What Trust essentially aims to do is give the listener an idea of what a Saoirse set at a Trust party would sound like. But by virtue of its own uniqueness and incredible honesty, Trust ends up opening a portal into Saoirse’s utopia and her fascinating experience of club music. Sonically, it’s all rooted in dance. There’s distinct touches of techno and pounding bass music. Every track is driven by big beats and familiar tropes, but it’s how these tracks arrive at and depart from these points that make for an enthralling journey. It’s very much listening to how Saoirse herself experiences these tropes and genres, filtering the recognisable 4/4 pulse of techno or the rapid breakbeat of garage through her specific lens.
Opening and title track Trust takes a techno pulse and layers swatches of ambient moods atop. Strange and introspective vocal samples and glowing ebbs of synth juxtapose the throb of the beat, providing an abstract fluidity to the form’s rigid masculinity. A subversion of this masculinity also unfolds on the obnoxiously titled (.)(.), where Saoirse’s take on scuzzy tech-house forgoes the impish brashness in favour of sensual, bubbling synth modulations. Then there’s Drop the Bass, which tethers between garage breakbeats and gabber rave hyperactivity, while similar abstract ambient tones are left to drift in the track’s undercurrents. These off-kilter atmospherics form somewhat of a running commentary on Trust. These are intriguingly meta touches of auteurship, like sonic actualisations of Saoirse’s opinions and experiences of the music, or perhaps more specifically, the action on the dance floor that the music underscores.
Established as a space of safety for herself and her friends to collaborate and experiment, trUst the label looks to be a laboratory for the future of the underground. Saoirse’s debut is evidence of this; a defiantly unique collection that refuses to sacrifice its individuality. Saoirse is one of those cultural innovators on the cusp of transforming the landscape of electronic music, leading us into the future by way of the club. And it would be foolish of us not to follow. Preview the EP below.
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