Mariam Rezaei - BOWN (2023)

Award-winning composer, turntablist and performer Mariam Rezaei approaches turntablism with an openness that's not just progressive, it's surprisingly optimistic. On 'BOWN', the central part of a triptych alongside 'BLUD' and 'SKEEN' (both released on Graham Dunning's Fractal Meat Cuts imprint), Rezaei reconsiders the established logic of turntable-based music, blurring expectations and persistently reaching into the unknown. In her capable hands the decks become chameleonic, imitating an arsenal of instruments that she subsequently bends into uncanny forms. Rezaei sees turntablism as a continuum rather than a fixed style, and she invites a carefully picked crew of collaborators - Theresa Winter, Luka Koenig, Alya Al-Sultani, Bobby Glue and Gwily Edmondez - to help distort genre hallmarks until they're completely unrecognizable; vocals become sputtering oscillators, drums are turned into walls of sheet noise and acidic electronics mutate into unstable, foggy drones.

Rezaei started DJing when she was just 15 years old, developing her skills in the competitive and male-dominated hip-hop battle arena. She began to realize that even in this fast-paced environment, the turntable was too often used as a vehicle to exercise a sequence of customary tropes. Inspired by art from across the genre spectrum, she developed her own unique language with the instrument, bringing in ideas from free improv and extreme noise to extend her palette. So she doesn't ask a question on 'it COULD be jazz', but makes a statement, replying tersely to a colleague's barbed comment after a performance at London Jazz Festival last year. Transforming wild horn squeaks into time-stretched gasps and scrubbed, chattering voices, and garbling drums from Guttersnipe's Bobby Glue into ratcheting whirrs, she assures listeners that jazz too is far more than a predetermined set of aphorisms. "How can I make the turntable sound as extreme as Roscoe Mitchell or Peter Brötzmann?" she wondered during an interview with Wire magazine in April.

YEAH YOU's Gwily Edmondez throws his self-styled "wild pop" vocalizations into Rezaei's continuum on 'GEORDIE SPICE', so she replies by juxtaposing his insectoid rasps with garbled West Asian chants and microscopic radio pop bleeps and beats. And traces of Grouper's vaporous articulations hang gently over unstable dancefloor vibrations on 'BURNING LIKE FUCK', situating the track a few steps from the club, outside in the smoking area or a nearby restroom. On 'I WANT U 2' meanwhile, Rezaei taps London-based soprano Alya Al-Sultani, scratching her operatic cries until they become chirps and cutting them into an abstracted conversation about the role of women in civilization. 'BOWN' is a confident, fervid statement from Rezaei that doesn't just burn up turntablism's presumed rulebook, it points a weary finger at an avant-garde landscape that still ignores the work countless women have put in to guide its progress. This is never more evident than on the tongue-in-cheek 'IDIOTIC MUSIC PEOPLE CUNTS', one-and-a-half minutes of garbled noise that throws a middle finger up to the industry, extending a warm embrace to the real ones.