Power (LP)

Power is the debut album from Lotic, an expansive exploration of the many ways in which power can be expressed and experienced. Those familiar with Lotic's two 2015 EPs - Heterocetera (Tri Angle) and Agitations (Janus) - will trace a warm-blooded evolution: Power retains the Berlin musician's inquisitive intensity, while mining the depths of nuance like never before.

Across its 11 songs, Lotic stretches their wings into unexpected new spaces, both compositionally, and, for the first time, vocally. "Hunted", returns the colonial gaze with an arched eyebrow and a hushed chant in one of the more pop-leaning moments on the album. "Distribution of Care" pulls Lotic's rigorous club aesthetic into a symphonic context, pairing strings and drums in a wordless questioning of society's priorities. The playful "Nerve" serves up an icey hip-hop beat over which they invoke their H-Town roots while issuing a warning. And, of course, there couldn't be a sonic exposition of power without its most generous manifestation: "Heart" is a love ballad that finds Lotic and NON Records's Moro, the album's sole guest, trading vulnerable verses. "It originally started as an empowerment album," says Lotic. "I felt that I needed to offer something outside of myself, as sort of a healing moment. And then I lost my apartment. Mentally, I could only work on music once every three months or something.

The question of what would be empowering - the answer to that changed so often over a two-year period. I had to figure out who I was all over again. With this record, I went back and incorporated all of my musical selves."