aja monet
Alessandro Cortini
Alice Longyu Gao
Ami Dang
Anika
Astrid Sonne
Ata Kak
Beverly Glenn-Copeland
Brìghde Chaimbeul
Carla dal Forno
Caterina Barbieri
Cecile Believe
Chuquimamani-Condori
Circuit des Yeux
Clarissa Connelly
Cole Pulice
Colin Stetson
Dan English
Essaie pas
Evicshen
Faten Kanaan
Fennesz
Flore Laurentienne
FUJI|||||||||||TA
Golin
Hana Stretton
Hatis Noit
Helena Deland
Hildegard
Horse Lords
Hyd
james K
Jerusalem In My Heart
JJJJJerome Ellis
Joanne Robertson
Joe Rainey
John Glacier
Kelly Moran
KMRU
KOKOKO!
Los Thuthanaka
Lucrecia Dalt
Malibu
Maria Chávez
Maria Somerville
Marie Davidson
Marina Herlop
Meara O’Reilly
Meth Math
ML Buch
Moin
Myriam Gendron
Nadah El Shazly
NEW YORK
Niecy Blues
Ouri
Radwan Ghazi Moumneh
Smerz
Solids
Still House Plants
Tarta Relena
The Turntable Trio
Valentina Magaletti
William Basinski
Yasuaki Shimizu
Zoh Amba
Zola Jesus
Marie Davidson
AGENTRebecca Gekht
Marie Davidson has always gone against the grain. The French-Canadian producer’s first four albums established her as a transgressive force in dance music, with her 2014 debut Perte d’identité (Loss of identity) laying the foundations of organic electronics and introspective storytelling that she would continue to build upon. Each release probed her “dualistic” relationship to nightlife while becoming increasingly saturated in its abundance of sounds, from Detroit techno to Italo disco, finally reaching a fever pitch on 2018’s Polaris Music Prize-nominated Working Class Woman. Putting the pitfalls of club culture and her own fractured identity under a withering satirical lens, Working Class Woman doesn’t wrestle with the existential as much as fling it around the dancefloor.
After that, 2020’s Renegade Breakdown broke the mould entirely. With “a will to explore other styles of music,” Davidson formed a band with her husband and longtime collaborator Pierre Guerineau (also her counterpart in the duo Essaie Pas) and producer Asaël Robitaille. A deeply collaborative project, the trio wrote a slate of experimental pop songs inspired by records they would play at living-room afterparties – jazz classics, French chanson, electronica – on which Davidson sang for the first time.
Four years and a pandemic later, Davidson’s sixth studio album, City of Clowns, marks a return to the club – but not as you know it. The techno thump and scathing spoken-word delivery of Working Class Woman resurface at points, but the pop structures and melodic sensibilities of Renegade Breakdown also remain. It’s a “strange” sonic blend even by Davidson’s own standards. “It’s definitely linking back to what I was doing pre-pandemic, but with a bit of an evolution,” she says. “I didn’t want to just repeat myself.” The sound and the spirit of the album are shaped, too, by the fact that Davidson has a new antagonist. This time it’s not club culture that’s coming for her sense of self, it’s Big Tech.
TERRITORY North America
PRESSPitchfork
The Quietus
Enfnts Terribles
The Guardian
CONNECTBandcampI️nstagram
Soundcloud