- As Kate Wax, Aisha Devi has done everything from spoken word to Knife-style pop, but the focus has always been on her voice—piercing, confrontational and elastic. With her turn towards what she calls "ritual music" under her given name, Devi has kept the emphasis on vocals but re-tooled the spiky electro into more smeared forms of dance music.
"Hakken Dub" never finds its centre, pummelled by distorted and dislocated kick drums that sound like she found the scattered pieces of an old gabber tune but didn't know how to put them back together properly. Marked by bright pads and her own vocal gasps, it's a captivating mess that doesn't sound like much of a club track, though that's perhaps what IVVVO's remix is for. Recasting it as a shiny house cut, the edge is sanded off her voice, which is rendered childlike and soft.
On the more challenging side, "Throat Dub (Tool)" layers slabs of vocals that drone like a didgeridoo, a product of Devi's recent training in Tibetan throat singing. It's a little bit spooky, and there's something hypnotic about listening to all nine minutes of it, but the novelty wears off after the first few times. On his remix, Hieroglyphic Being pretty much ignores the original, instead setting off on an equally long journey through sunny house vibes. With its springy, time-stretched percussion and jazzy bleeps, it sounds almost like the Chicago producer submitted the wrong track to an otherwise unrelentingly dark EP, but it's a nice way to wind down a strange and intriguing record.
TracklistA1 Hakken Dub
A2 Throat Dub (Tool)
B1 Hakken Dub (IVVVO Remix)
B2 Throat Dub (The Hieroglyphic Being Experience 9)