Semiratruth's 'S!M' Is a Gleeful, Booby-Trapped Masterclass in Taking Dance Music Apart
Twenty-two tracks. Several under ninety seconds. One called “bootingup. . .” that runs barely a minute. Semiratruth — the Brooklyn-based, Chicago-born artist Semira Truth Garrett — produced, arranged and mixed all of it alone, and the ruthless brevity is the argument: every idea gets exactly as long as it earns.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Bandcamp Daily’s Jon Buckland, naming S!M Album of the Day, describes the method as distilling “elements of dance down to its constituent catchphrases, blurring, distorting, and exaggerating them almost beyond recognition.” The furniture of the genre is all present — Buckland’s inventory is “big piano chords, carnal basslines, and booming kick drums” — “but they’re arranged to unsettle, not dance to.”
The Spatial Dynamics: The percussion is where the record shows its hand. On “bite!,” Buckland writes, “tweaking 303 acid leads and club-ready beats” arrive as expected, but “where trilled hi-hats would typically complement the rhythm, the percussion here seems to be played on a chandelier made of ice.” Elsewhere his ear catches “the glassy dribbles of ‘Atitlán’” ringing “like marbles plopped into rocky pools.” Mastering by Brok Mende at Friends of Friends Recording keeps all of that legible at volume.
Standout Performance
Radia, co-producing and singing on “Ocean Heat,” which Buckland hears as a voice that “alternates between a slurred drool and the squeak of an excited cartoon mouse” while “cascading bells condense into a single snorted sound.” Kambaba Jasper also turns up on “Running from me.” Both guests are used as texture rather than relief, which is the correct call.
Why It’s Certified
Because the jokes land and the craft holds. “Veruca Salt” builds itself around an impatient “I want it now,” which Buckland reads as a line drawn “between the greedy Roald Dahl character and outdated EDM artists’ individualistic obsessions.” Even the ending refuses to soothe: a “panicked thrashing of sped-up keys” where an outro should be. His verdict is the one to print. “It’s a messy ride, a hoot, and a prod towards rethinking our expectations of dancefloor explorations.”