On Repeat: In Give Me Another Chance, Empress Of Storms The Dance Floor
Tristan Young @talltristan
Lorely Rodriguez distils herself into pure emotion. Her project Empress Of has been an exercise in experimenting with the different vectors in which to communicate those emotions. Between her first two LPs and a handful of other offerings she has taken the form of advent-garde pop provocateur and RnB vibe ambassador, among other things. Her sentiments have attempted translation through lyrics, instrumental idiosyncrasies, and atmospheric moods depending on the track or album. She has occupied these different artistic spaces to convey everything from humid and fidgeting stir-craziness to economic and class based frustrations. Finding the proper contours of her medium to pair with her rhetorical ambition has been key to what makes Empress Of so affecting at her best. In her new track Give Me Another Chance, from her upcoming LP I’m Your Empress Of, Rodriguez seems to be aiming to communicate the euphoria and power of sensation, of the body high- and how an elicit plea to another person can be manifested in such terms. Thus, she has turned to the dance floor. With Give Me Another Chance, Rodriguez is no longer manipulating abstract pop concepts into deftly rendered hooks, or channelling the appeal of the love worn crooner. She is making straight up house music, and it’s outstanding. The low fi demo aesthetic of the opening seconds is sucked into a wind tunnel of sustained four on the floor tempo and meticulously balanced clarity. An initially cold and anodyne lyrical sequences from Rodriguez bursts with floridity and vibrancy as a rattling industrial high hat briefly dominates the proceedings to such an extent you’d think she recruited Pat Mahoney for drums. Flamboyant and slightly inelegant synth patches squelch and roar with abandon like something out of a Hot Chip track. They would almost be obnoxious if they weren’t delightfully overpowered by the sheer fidelity of Rodriguez’s transfixing voice. The asynchronous dance between the elongated flows of her writing, “I’m asking you baby, choose me over her”, and the punctuated staccato of the decks is mesmerizing, intuiting your body towards graceful glides and shrieks of muscular expression. Somewhere between a ballet and a rave, which makes perfect sense considering the whole affair sounds like something Dan Snaith could have produced for a Daphni set. Towards the end Rodriguez repeats that icy cold opening sequence but this time sets it ablaze with a burst of anxious energy, reminding the listener that no matter how sophisticated her rhythms get, her voice remains the truly salient factor. I’m Your Empress Of is out April 3rd via Terrible Records, and if Give Me Another Chance is any indication, it’s going to be an absolute weapon.