- The French artist's first album marks a decade of symbiotic growth with a techno scene that she's helped nurture.
- I clearly remember the first time I came across Anetha. It's one of the few things I can recall from that day in a tiny tent at Paris's Weather festival in 2014. There weren't many punters on the stage dedicated to local crews who had to contend with the likes of Ben UFO and the Detroit supergroup Three Chairs smashing it in the blazing sun. My friends and I didn't stay very long for Anetha, a then-unknown DJ, but it was enough to be impressed. A few years later, her name popped up again, this time far beyond the capital's confines.
"Don't rush to grow up" is what her mom used to tell her as a precocious DJ in her teens. This ended up being the title of the first EP on her label, Mama told ya, and helps explain why her debut album is arriving a decade into her career. She's certainly been busy in the meantime—besides an impressive touring schedule and running the label, she started the artist management agency Mama loves ya. Everything she does is founded on two core values: collaboration and sustainability.
The latter has a lot to do with Anetha's vision of motherhood. On the aptly-titled Mothearth, she tackles these intertwined themes using the harsh, synthetic sounds of dance music's harder strains, from gabber to (psy)trance. Some of the best tracks are those where she fully embraces excess: "Whistleblower," which shakes you up with its drum rolls, whistles and ever-rising shrieking synths, or "Hit No Parade" with flares dive-bombing over a mind-numbing plod that recalls my favorite kind of hard house.
For all its eco-friendly titles ("Terraphoria", "Ecotecture"), the nature depicted on this record has a posthuman feel to it. Disembodied voices and insectoid chirps invoke Iris van Herpen-like textures, as does the album's art direction. What might seem antithetical makes sense on a planet already spoilt beyond repairs: "Do you even / remember/ the smell / of grass / of fruit / of soil," Anetha asks on the title track. Its persisting trancey build conjures the surreal Garden of Eden in Dune's "Hardcore Vibes"' music video.
A seasoned DJ, Anetha knows when to tug at the heartstrings, when to switch gears and when to take her foot off the pedal. There's no better example of that than the closing track, a big tearjerker of a drum & bass tune that seems to reimagine liquid for the album's posthuman world. It's these curveballs that set her apart in a techno scene that often seems only interested in going faster and hitting harder.
Anetha has long outgrown the tiny festival tents of yesteryear. With Mothearth, she delivers an album that packages everything she's been working towards, conceptually and musically. In an interview from around the time she started her label, Anetha mentions how her operations tend to be a family affair. It took her some time to birth Mothearth but as they say, if you want to go fast, go alone—if you want to go far, go together.
Tracklist01. Girls are fascinating
02. Terraphoria
03. Sorry for being so sexy
04. Hit no parade
05. Mothearth
06. Beauty of nothing
07. Let's talk about femininity
08. Whistleblower
09. Ecotecture
10. Let me d&be