A borderless blend of beats and textures from techno vanguard Karen Gwyer.
Growing up just outside Detroit in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Karen Gwyer has techno coursing through her veins. She would listen to pounding radio sets from the Motor City on night drives as a young teen, imprinting her output with a woozy Midwestern flavor that’s harder to replicate than you’d think.
After a move to New York City, Gwyer left the USA to start a new life in London and has been based in the UK capital for over a decade. In that time she’s made a name for herself with a slew of releases and acclaimed all-hardware live shows. Notching up releases on No Pain In Pop, Opal Tapes and Chloe Frieda’s Alien Jams label, her latest album Rembo is out this month on Don’t Be Afraid and is already one of FACT’s favorites of the year.
Gwyer’s FACT mix is typically diverse and psychedelic. Exploring the ragged hardware experiments of New England’s Wilted Woman and Isabella, she drags in oddities from labelmates rRoxymore and Achim Maerz, honing in on dusty, sci-fi flecked house sounds before descending into kosmische ambience for the last half-hour. It’s an expertly blended antidote to the monotony of tech house, with more twists and turns than a Möbius strip.
Rembo will be released on July 21 on Don’t Be Afraid.
Tracklist:
Benedict Drew – ‘Crawling Through Tory Slime Side 2’
Broken English Club – ‘Stray Dogs’
FOQL – ‘Mostly Mistaken’
Wilted Woman – ‘Warmer’
Batu – ‘Marius’
Isabella – ‘Schuld’
FOQL – ‘Sad But Funny But Scary’
Machine Woman – ‘New Sept’
DeViere & Ali Berger – ‘Towards the Infinite’
Achim Maerz – ‘Experiment I’ (forthcoming DBA)
rRoxymore – ‘Thoughts of An Introvert’ (forthcoming DBA)
Lostsoundbytes – ‘ONEC’
Morgan Alexander – ‘Near Intractable’ (Guided Piss Take Mix)
Snakepiss – ‘Fuck U, My Good Friend’
Sote – ‘Flux Of Sorrow’
Raica – ‘Switch’
Herron – ‘Cold Hands’
MP-57 – ‘Handstyle’
Prefix Moniker – ‘Inductively Coupled’
Prefix Moniker – ‘Helicons’
Justin Walter – ‘Sixty’
Cofaxx – ‘Tide Pool’
Domenique Dumont – ‘371’
Cofaxx – ‘Heise Pressure’
_moonraker – ‘Ourbrc’