Opening and title track "Water" sends me back to the opening song of Queen Bjork's Medulla, what I felt when the first warble and whine of "The Pleasure is All Mine" came floating through my headphones. Lotic no doubt grabbed much inspiration from the legendary Icelandic singer. There are also shades of FKA Twigs. Gritty, tectonic.
Water is music that explodes and crashes, "Oceania" and "Glass & Patron," it pours from the mouth of Mother Earth, crashing like waves, exploding like volcanic rage. Call and response: she sings out, the world responds.
This is the type of music that always wraps itself around my soul. A throaty suggestion of the absolute ferocity of life: womb, mother, woman, earth. Lotic is a marvel in the same space as the aforementioned musicians, continuing on a legacy of woman-hued excellence and perfection. The ache of something deep and vulnerable, a regal humanism that is being in this skin, in this body, bears to mind. There is strength here, but there is also a need to be held and touched and kept safe.
With Water, Lotic breathes into the chaos and brings it all to life, into brilliant focus. It's a mess and it's wild, but you can visualize every second. Like being in a house of mirrors when every reflection that smiles back is cracked. Angles and slices of face and body it may be, but there is still a body. There is till a reflection. There is still a way in and a way out.