Supposedly, this EP was released by genie_beanie_in_the_washing_machiney@hotmail.com. But that’s too long as one word for the Redshift site formatting so I’m going with Genie. Genie is a Ngunnawal-based DJ and, as I have just recently learned, pretty excellent producer. I’ve seen Genie play quite a bit, always under the moniker Genie, so I’m gonna go with that.

Genie’s debut EP is a display of effortless breadth yet admirable restraint. Your Love Makes Me Sing places heavy emphasis on the ‘ambient’ genre prefix, then cycles through an impressive variety of labels that might come after. You can hear a flash of Jockstrap-y glitch-pop on ‘Roll the Dice’, sputtering garage on ‘Hahaha’, late-00s weirdo dubstep on the title track, pummelling dub techno deep in the mix of ‘Drone Music Makes Me Horny’, and even enigmatic turn-of-the-century Southern hip-hop on ‘Be Free’. It’s unusual for a new-gen Australian producer cover this much ground in twenty minutes, and it’s rare for someone with such omnivorous taste to distil their influences so effectively. But Genie is a non-interventionist producer. She leans on an intuitive sense of space and harmony for dynamic quality, gesturing alternately at momentum and stillness without ever crowding the mix. Her songs are ambitious and meandering but never chaotic.

Taken whole, Your Love Makes Me Sing is a patient exercise in tension and release. ‘Be Free’ opens the record on an eerie, mournful note, with three minutes of hesitant strings and haunted choirs that remind me of Perfume Genius’ ‘Herem’. Then, almost imperceptibly, the song moves into a gentle, ruminative place, where inquisitive keys call out into the ether but receive no response back. The title track, ‘Your Love Makes Me Sing’, is similarly shapeshifting, conjuring moments of warmth and curious melody as a temporary distraction from the gnawing feeling of danger abound. Each time it threatens to snap into urgent techno, Genie alleviates the pressure and the song retreats to familiar terrain. Any sense of comfort promised by these first two tracks evaporates pretty quickly, though. From the murderous pulse of bass that opens ‘Roll The Dice’ until the aqueous alarm that closes ‘Drone Music Makes Me Horny’, Genie sidelines her playful streak to explore harsher soundscapes. That passage is brutal and impenetrable – listening to it feels like holding your breath for ten minutes – but when the melancholic exhale of ‘Hahaha’ finally comes, the sweetness of the moment is intensified. The brightness and colour and movement of those final minutes feel so richly earned for having made it through the disquiet.

The EP traces the terrain of a world that is both menacing and beautiful. The contrast between growling bass and shrill washes of synth on ‘Roll The Dice’ is almost nauseating, while the slow oscillations of ‘Drone Music Makes Me Horny’ sound like the heavy breaths of a beast sleeping close by. But for every moment of impending doom, there is an equivalently wondrous counterpoint: the faint echo of a Middle Eastern microtonal scale on ‘Roll the Dice’; rubbery arpeggios giving way to palpitating trance synths on the title track; the gorgeous, indecipherable vocals that stop ‘Hahaha’ in its tracks. As a matter of fact, my housemate just said that ‘Hahaha’ sounds like an Adventure Time song. I agree. And that’s actually a nice comparison for the record: the innocent joy of exploration at the show’s core feels sincere, not saccharine, because it works through genuine emotional complexity to get there. Likewise, listening to Your Love Makes Me Sing feels like a reward precisely because Genie takes her time to reveal its glowing heart.

85

Sam Gollings

29 July 2024