I think it pays to be honest as a reviewer and admit when you have no reference for what you're hearing. What is wonderful about the encounters that you and I, and everyone, has with music as an art form is that context can be secondary to aesthetic experience. You can like something. It can even make you feel amazing. But you might have no idea of what was going through the artist's head while they made the music you've enjoyed. For certain songs and artists, this is by design. They need to say something, and they need to say it through a song, and whether the audience takes their meaning or not is secondary to the act of communication and creation itself. A lot of dance music works this way, as the lyrics are usually repetitive or non-existent, allowing the rhythm to the talking. And what it often says may have a very different meaning for the creator than for then for each, or any, body moving about the dance floor.
This is a long-winded way of introducing an album that I've enjoyed immensely but for which I have no idea how to correlate what I think I'm hearing with what I believe the intended message of the music is. In a lot of ways, South African producer and FAKA collective member Desire Marea is dyed in the whole dance-music dynamo. They have an exceptional sense for sequencing, timing, and the general architecture of beats and grooves. In this way, their latest album Desire, is just an exceptional electronic dance album, as capable of motivating gyrations as thoroughly compelling as anything Jimmy Somerville ever midwifed for the muses. Only on Desire, the sexuality ingrained in the music is transposed through the transformative membranes of black African queerness and gqom. It is also apparently the sound of someone allowing themselves to slip into darkness, fade from the foreground, and recede from the light- in a kind of spiritual disappearing act- where they phase into the walls while their presence remains forever imprinted on the space while their influence and ego become obfuscated and impossible to quantify. On tracks like the ephemeral "Zibuyile Izimakade" the back-splashing beats and otherworldly grooves permeate the listener like fog through a screen door, later this is contrasted by the recurrent swivel signal of electronic rhythms which presages a oozing descent into a pressure chamber of suspended, agoraphobic retreat- both tracks showing the artist disappearing but remaining perpetually present all the same.
There are times on Desire when the artist is more upfront with their audience about their intentions and connections, though. Like on the tender, dark-reverie of the tearfully earnest, electro-current "You Think I'm Horny," and the slow swell of the dark-wave disco-soul of "Tavern Kween," an apparent homage to the Desire Marea's mother. But even when they are speaking directly about their purposes, experiences, and identity, Desire Marea still feels elusive and decentered, their essential nature distributed and defuse, and beyond one's grasp.
While this demeanor of enigma is certainly appealing, it would become tiresome if something telling didn't eventually break through the shadowy ambiance. And Desire Maria's furtiveness does melt away at points, although, only in unexpected ways. In this regard, I'm thinking specifically of the track, "Thokozani," an uptempo club number suffice with haunting synthy bluster. There are no words to this track and no vocals; it is just a beat and a rhythm- expertly composed and executed. And it's this track that gives me the most insight into Desire Maria. They are an artist first and foremost, and their intention as an artist is to create. In this case, they have made something wonderful, pleasant and thoughtful- but if the thing that they had made had none of these characteristics, it would have been all the same to them.
There are things that Desire Marea clearly wants to say and the world with which they are willing to share with us- but the true recipients of the artist's message are a select few, and even then, and of the places that the artist reveals to us, only they will know the terrain of its sonic geometry. For the rest of us, the majority of us, we will simply have to be contented bearing witness to its splendor. There is joy in this, the pleasure of experiencing beauty at a remove. Knowing that you can hear and see it, but never touch or grasp it for your own. You have to be contented at this distance, or else be consumed by obsession. An artist can only ever give you something to admire; they can never fully give you themselves.
