– THE PEACEFUL PROTEST –

If you’ve seen FKA Twigs live recently, there’s a decent chance you’ve seen Lucida Chua perform as part of her band.

What you probably didn’t realise is that you were watching a cello-wielding, classical music revolutionary, badass bi-atch being reborn before your very eyes.

You see, it was during her stint with the artist formerly known (to her Mum) as Tahliah Debrett Barnett that Chua honed her craft, experimenting with running her instrument through FX pedals to achieve the fragile, ghostly tones that so haunt her sound.

And it is all this and so much more that she’s bought to her self-released debut solo EP, Antidotes 1.

The opening track from that EP is Feel Something; on first listen, a Sadé-esque lounge-jazz-lite affair that, just as the multitude of round-abouts in her native Milton Keynes work brilliantly at slowing the traffic, has a talent for slowing the blood in the veins.

But, listen more closely and you’ll hear the cropped and compressed vocals, the horror-flick dissonance and the sinister glissandos. All of a sudden, elements of another former collaborator, K Á R Y Y N start to appear as well as those of her most formative inspiration Mogwai.

The result is a sound that straddles the worlds of R&B, classical, electronica and even post-rock in almost equal measure.

Ultimately, what you’re left with is a frigid, fraught track that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of simply wanting to feel something. Anything.

Antidotes 1 is out now.

MORE FROM THIS WEEK’S MIX

TAYLOR McFERRIN: NOW THAT YOU NEED ME
YAZZ AHMED: SHOAL OF SOULS
NICK WALTERS & PARADOX ENSEMBLE: 34268
ELIANE ELIAS: BABY COME TO ME

P.S. You can find all of the tracks reviewed above in the 45 Revolutions per Minute playlist below or click to access the 45 RPM Playlist on Spotify itself.

If you like what you hear (or even if you don’t), please engage in dialogue with me @45rpm_Reviews on Twitter. And, if you’d like to receive updates weekly, please subscribe to the email list to get these recommendations sent to your inbox weekly.

– SV –