IVVY presents YVVI

Seattle artist IVVY lands on New York label Sheik N Beik Records with a bumper selection of cuts that come with remixes by Bergsonist.

IVVY, aka Madi Levine, makes music for heady dance floors. They layer in squelching synths to disfigured techno rhythms influenced by a youth spent at renegade warehouse parties in the Midwest. They have been on constant tour for a while now and left their mark everywhere, from Hot Mass (PGH) to On Earth (Toronto), while also teaching production and studio management workshops at events such as Kremfest 2019.

Madi also organizes the experimental ambient music festival Ground Hum at home in Seattle and says the songs on this EP are a means of emotional processing. Violence, oppression, drugs, sex, growth, hope, and deep magic are explored through futurist techno tracks.

This EP represents a new era of healing for me, tracks created through a need to reflect on the way trauma has shaped my creative work. For me these tracks are musical building blocks to a better version of myself.
IVVY

The compelling "Top Me" opens up with pulsing deep techno drums, bass, and loopy vocal fragments that bring plenty of edge. "2 Balloons for 15" is more clanking and textured, with percussion ripping up the minimal rhythm and synths growing in intensity next to warped vocal mutterings. "On Some ‘Rear Window' Shit" is another deliciously dark and driving take on mutant techno with twisted metal and whirring machine sounds, and "It Only Takes One Brick" is powered by distorted bass rumbles straight from a sleazy warehouse and peppered with twitchy stabs and menacing voices.

Remixer Bergsonist is Morocco-born but NYC-based. Her work explores notions of identity, memory, and social politics. She founded the community resource Pick Up The Flow and the Bizaarbazaar label and hosts monthly shows on NTS Radio. Her first take on "It Only Takes One Brick" is gloopy and off-balance - a perfectly heavyweight house cut with vast kicks and tripped-out details. The second one is just as thumping, but this time with a broken beat pattern and more sci-fi synth details.

A trio of digital-only cuts then closes out the EP - the stripped-back but booming techno-paranoia of "Eric's House 3 AM," the glitchy and industrial textures of lineal banger "Gives Me Hope For Us," and the spooky synths and eerie energy of the urgent "Witchcraft."

IVVY - YVVI
Release Date February 2024
Label Sheik N Beik Records

Tracklist
1. Top Me
2. 2 Balloons for 15
3. On Sum ‘Rear Window' Shit
4. It Only Takes One Brick
5. It Only Takes One Brick (Bergsonist's Heavy Bricklayer Remix)
6. It Only Takes One Brick (Bergsonist's No Future Bricks Remix)
7. Eric's House 3 AM
8. Gives Me Hope For Us
9. Witchcraft