Machine Woman - Genau House - I Can Mend Your Broken Heart

About this track

Berlin resident Anastasia Vtorova aka Machine Woman follows up her ‘For Sweden’ 12” on Peder Mannerfelt with two new cuts for Where To Now? Records, accompanied by an expansive and sprawling remix from Kassem Mosse. Machine Woman is beginning to cement herself as a rather unique figure in the world of Techno. Her music is undoubtedly brutalist, functional, industrial, and stripped back for the most basic of heads down body movement, but there’s a persistent seductive, soulful, and human element to her work which is in a state of constant interplay with this idea of the ‘Machine Woman’ - an approach which is undoubtedly inspired by the pioneers of man vs. machine music - Kraftwerk. ‘Genau House’ opens with the 11 minute ‘I can mend your broken heart’. Shuffling percussion struts alongside a myriad of synthesized melodies and the sound of data processing. For Anastasia, the track is inspired by unsuccessful Tinder dates, and the yearning lyrical content of the tracks certainly laments the implications of this perhaps often mechanical and rigid love seeking world against an honest and seeking heart – A Machine Music space to explore the increasingly common impact of disposable Computer Love colliding head on with a legitimate longing and want for lasting human connection. ‘Friday Night’ encompasses a similar vocal mantra but here the focus is not so much on the intricacies of the human heart, but rather the seduction, enthrallment, and sometimes unfortunate exclusivity inherent in sectors of the Berlin nightlife. Undoubtedly a track aimed towards the pitch-black nightclub ‘Friday Night’ is stricter in its intention, with less space for romanticism. An unrelenting Techno thud grinds with the mechanical shifting of gears and movement to create the desired hypnotic state whilst Anastasia’s heavily treated vocals plume the melody into even darker recesses of the dancefloor. Kassem Mosse makes an appearance to close the record with his own incredible interpretation of ‘I can mend your broken heart’. To call this a remix is a discredit to Kassem’s ability to completely transform a work into his own whilst staying respectful to the original artists intention. Much like his interpretation of Simone White’s ‘Flowers in May’ (Honest Jons, 2015) Kassem takes the vocal line of the original and sets it against a deep, sprawling, immersive soundscape of his own. Over it’s 10+ minutes a Deepchord style dubwise basin of echo and melody lingers behind the deepest Trip-Hop style palette of slow, churning, and intricately evolving percussion. “Machine Woman draws upon her foundations in ‘90s Leningrad and the hardest edge of her new home city’s industrial scene to forge a raw, buzzing, and brutalist style working on the cusp of dance functionality and avant-garde, tonal exploration. – Boomkat.” credits released May 13, 2016

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