OUT NOW ‘Just Wanna Live Some’ by Perera Elsewhere
Over a decade after the release of her debut solo album, award-winning producer, DJ and multi-instrumentalist Sasha Perera, aka Perera Elsewhere, is finally ready to express herself emphatically, no holds barred. The title itself is a cheeky statement of intent; on 'Just Wanna Live Some', Perera inventories her most schizophrenic inclinations, disorganizing her gravelly avant-pop productions with toothsome experimental rap, psychedelic grime, dancefloor-ready footwork and noisy, saturated ambient deviations. And as anyone who's experienced her DJ sets before will already know, she's long been scouring the racks for forward-thinking sounds from across the musical map, whether it's singeli from Tanzania, rubbery British soundsystem futurism, Indonesian hardcore or even steel pan music from Hamburg. She applies that same voracious appetite to 'Just Wanna Live Some', splicing together borderless expressions that have just one thing in common - they're human. At a time when culture is inhibited by algorithms, advertising and attention, that consideration has never been more urgent.
The London-born, Berlin based artist's fourth solo album, it arrives three years after 'Home', a musical coming-of-age that helped to underline her self-styled "doom folk" sound. That album swept through years of Perera's tenacious research and development: her time skill sharing at production sessions in Berlin and educational initiatives in Asia and Africa, and sculpting a personal, autodidactic expression that was anchored by IRL experience, not technology. And she's moved on significantly since then; after supplementing 'Home' with a suite of remixes that showed the breadth of her interests, featuring Aho Ssan, Maral, 3Phaz and KMRU, among others, she headed back to the studio refreshed with a different kind of record in mind. Writing track after track, she began to cycle through all her influences and obsessions with a DJ's brain, recalling her time mastering the trumpet as a teenager, circling the club scene in London, fronting bass-pop band Jahcoozi and working as one of the first promoters to bring grime and dubstep to Berlin.
"If life is a map where's the X and that," she asks on 'Dream Like That', carving channels through her dubwise backdrop with pointed, poetic contemplations. Reflecting on addiction in all its forms and the carrot-and-stick torment of capitalism, Perera decides that there's no winning when the game is rigged, which makes the title track hit even harder. Chopping and blurring the title itself over quivering analog drones and jerky foley footwork patterns, she splits the difference between the main stage and the back room, capturing the relief of unburdening yourself and thinking small when mainstream logic is claiming the opposite. And breaking Côte d'Ivoire MC Andy S echoes the same sentiments on 'Fuck Le System', draping Perera's brassy, genre-fluxing beats with fiery French raps, that bounce between screeching oscillations and powdery beatbox hits.
Perera's long-time obsession with grime emerges on 'Angelic One'. Her voice scatters kaleidoscopically across an oily distillate of square wave bass prangs, syncopated kicks and typewriter clacks that judder around fanfare-like horns. Not completely pensive, but struck through with thoughtful deviations, it bridges the gap between Perera's upfront moments and her more philosophical abstractions. On 'Fountain', for example, she links hands with Congolese-Angolan musician Batila and Senegalese singer Yadikone; Perera wrote the song as an instrumental first, playing trumpet alongside Oren Gerlitz's guitar, then asked the two Berlin-based artists to provide the verses and hook. And on 'Post-Everything', Perera urges buttoned-up listeners broaden their horizons as searing white noise spirits through her evocative brass meditations. There might not be a concept for 'Just Wanna Live Some', but there's an attitude. Unbound by expectations, Perera is ready to flex her musical muscle - as a producer, as a composer, as a lyricist and a vocalist - and she's determined to do it her own way.