If you happen to be that rare breed of homo more inclined to take reverb over Rihanna, preferring Björk to Britney and Krautrock to Kylie then congrats – you’re safe now. See this column as a refuge, a safe place in which to forget the fuck-ton of glittered pop-vomit forced down your ears in every gay club you’ve had to endure since coming out. But surely all gays love Girls Aloud? OMG J-Lo tho! No, mate. This is innovative, alternative music with a queer agenda. Get with it:
We all know FKA Twigs by now, right? LP1 was brilliant, but EP2 was better. Venezuela-born Arca produced that record, and you need to know who he is. He’s co-produced Björk’s latest opus and Kanye’s ‘Yeezus’.
Better yet, he’s queer as fuck. Taking electronic club music into crazy nonsensical territories, with razor sharp percussion lashing out amidst dreamlike sound-scapes and manipulated samples, 2014’s debut LP ‘Xen’ is essential.
Lead single ‘Thievery’ is a surreal dancehall masterpiece with creeping beats and lightning synth lines. ‘Wound’ is a sweeping orchestral masterpiece, framing a fractured auto-tuned vocal in a whirlwind of dystopian emotion.
Disorientating, full of life – don’t expect to hear Arca in G-A-Y Late any time soon. Expect his second LP ‘Mutants’ before Christmas.
Lotic is a queer Berlin-based DJ/noise artist. Björk chose him to remix her latest, he says his ideal nightclub has ‘a puddle of tears in one corner and a puddle of cum in another’.
His ‘Heterocetera’ EP confronts club-culture with a macabre and uncompromisingly industrial agenda. His world is one of claustrophobia rawness and physicality – as if he collected the hellish, thudding energy of Berghain and pumped it into an alien sound desk.
A surefire way to spice up even the dullest of chill-out playlists, Lotic is totes one to watch in 2016.