Nadia Struiwigh ‎– WHRRu

The output of my emotions and telling stories with my sets filled with tracks of others works as an inspiration for my own productions,” says Nadia Struiwigh. As a fellow soundscaper, I feel close to that immersive and collective method of making sounds. After all, to me, music is a social endeavor even when the DJ assumes the stature of the lone artist on a proscenium. Yet the interpretation, manipulation, and permutations of other people's music within the structure of a “set,” allows the DJ to build new dictions, new forms of ephemerality, and social ways of imagining the story of the self. In this vein, as if talking to herself and other fellow musicians who see their music always constructed and informed by other musicians’ work, she asks in her full-length album, (WHRRu) Where are you? The limited edition vinyl was housed inside a splendidly inviting artwork. A small home, elevated by turtles, in a gloomy urban landscape. Giant balloons in the sky. Jellyfish floating in the inner cover. As a lover of wax, and LP art, how can you not want to listen to this album?

I often don’t listen to tracks in order, and the 4th track (Bizarph) was beautiful to start with. For the love of guitars, those gentle plucks are so kindly picked up by soft human sounds and the dominant eight bar melody line. The limping and evolving beat that arrives with feather-light hums and vocal work takes me to the turn of the millennium downtempo/trip-hop works of Bonobo, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Madlib, and yes, Boards of Canada But the track is quirky enough to be not close to any of those sounds. It is not dusty and bare, it affords more space, in as much as it is not as committed to the beat and solders a cornucopia of sounds. Track 7, PPDA, was an intriguing composition. The rhythm that arrives with all its minimalist background grandeur evokes a South Asian, Bhangra feel, especially with the snare like hits that sometimes play in reverse. The synths pulsate restlessly and progressively over slowly congealing background of bass hums and drones best characterized as sounds of the void.

The title track, for the love of layered synths, with the glory of organ smears, begins in anticipation. The sustain of delicious dominant notes accentuates the shimmering synths with subtle low ends. All of this disintegrates into overlapping vocal loops that vanish to give way to a horizon of smooth synth tones, that consumes itself with a gulp. I have not heard anything like this before. I want to open a set with this and something from Deru’s 1979. This record is from a musician who could as well make silent films to run with her mixes. But short of that, this vinyl issue is impeccable. It is worth having it in vinyl form.