MAYa & Tolga Baklacioglu - Kına (Remix EP)

Last year, we reviewed MAYa & Tolga's collaborative Kına LP, which was a wonderful distillation of their disparate approaches where MAYa's effortlessly cool vocal delivery, pitched somewhere between Nico and Leslie Winer, was energized by Tolga's relentless beats and abstract textures, bridging industrial and techno infused rhythms with MAYa's more evocative atmospheric sound.

On this remix EP, four prolific remixers - including Decimus, Muqata'a, Martial Canterel, Silent Servant - reinterpret those original tracks bringing their own perspectives and styles to the source material. The results from those disparate artists are illuminating breathing fresh life into tracks from an album we already rated highly here.

Lunging into buzzing, fizzing textures the opening moments of the Decimus remix of 'You Border Me In' veers close to a noise release before cutting to and settling into an amalgamation of murmurs, hurried breathing and sexualised coos over distant throbbing tones, scattered with minimal dub rhythms ricocheting off into the distance. Draped in glinting mournful synths, electronics quiver and quaver, bass tones rumble surrounding the insistent throb and sensual moans and breathless murmurs. From within its intense and claustrophobic layers reflecting the title, which in spoken words bookend this, Decimus have created something much more intimate and alluring.

On 'Jyoti' Palestinian producer Muqata'a casts MAYa's wistful vocals over a backdrop formed from looped based structures."Round and round" MAYa gently repeats. But within sliced and cutting loops, spliced with the word "sick" and pierced by anguished cries, it takes on a more brutal and aggressive form. Based on the tragic murder and gang rape of Jyoti Singh in India that recurring motif takes on a new meaning, echoing the cycles of violence perpetrated against women. Everything you need to know is captured succinctly in the spoken line: "Six men all deciding that her life wasn't worthwhile". The original version of 'Jyoti' was haunting, this is harrowing.

On Kına, 'Home' was cold and sterile, a mass of restless industrialised beats and textures warmed only by MAYa's gentle voice. That coldness remains in its gliding atmo synths but now rendered in pumping electro sequences and clipped dance rhythm the vocals are pushed forward creating something more song based and primed for the club floor. It never, however, masks the longing and confusion that MAYa, as an Englishwoman living in New York, has for her homeland. In spoken and yearning sung tones MAYa's lyrics reflect the impending upheaval, resulting in questions around identity, revolving around lines such as: "Home what is that to me". With its melodic shifts, unlocking tiny rhythms from the pummelling beats expanding into wider realms with passages of electro sequences, minimal synth artist Martial Canterel centres MAYa's voice in a dreamy song fusing beats and textures with a dancefloor energy.

Silent Servant's remix of 'Temperature Rises' surges with dance rhythms too. MAYa and Tolga's original beat ridden version might have focussed on the physical effects of touch and sensation but at the hands of LA producer Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant it is whipped up into flickering propulsive club rhythms basking MAYa's sensual tones which once cavorting now merely tease. In fact, the whole track teases. Drilling and slicing hard over massive shifting synths those hard hitting hypnotic rhythms sound just as if eighties New Order have been given a techno makeover and just as those drum machine rhythms begin to hammer and things heat up it slips out far too soon.

We were really enamoured by the original release which brought these two artists together so are stoked to see this get another outing in this remixed edition. Each remixer imprints their own sound on songs and while the remixes vary they never overshadow the essence captured in MAYa's voice and lyrics. Marking VENT's 21st release, Kına (Remix EP) is available in a vinyl edition of 120 copies all hand numbered with a risograph printed cover, and available digitally from VENT bandcamp