8Bitch: Equinox
Seed Records

That Equinox, 8Bitch's debut EP on Seed Records, names its four tracks after Greek and Egyptian gods and goddesses needn't scare anyone away. The music Maya Medvesek produces under the 8bitch name is eminently accessible, even when it encompasses multiple genres within the experimental-electronic field. Dubstep is perhaps the one most prominently heard but smatterings of garage, crunk, electronica, and ambient sneak into view also.

Sounding like some electrified spawn of Warp futurism, pastoral electronica, and dubstep, “Orpheus” turns heads with a grinding bottom-end of drum thrust and bass throb overlaid with glistening staccato keyboard patterns. “Hathor” slips in smidgens of garage and crunk into an otherwise huffing-and-puffing blend of tribal dubstep and soulful female cooing. “Astarte” lifts the chiming elements from “Orpheus” and this time pairs them with a skittering beat attack that has distant if mutated roots in jungle. A lustrous coda, the oh-so-pretty “Isis” goes for the pastoral jugular, so to speak, in focusing on chiming patterns alone and leaving the beats behind.

On this solidly crafted twelve-inch EP, Medvesek, who is of Slovenian descent and now splits her time between London and Glasgow, gets the job done in each case with militaristic efficiency, with none of the four cuts pushing past the four-minute mark.

December 2010