Nancy Leticia “Le Big Mac” (exclusive)

05 May 2015 — Noah Klein

Reclamation.

In 2k15 there are no mainstream female producers. If a world-renowned music festival dedicates a mere tenth of its programming to female artists it’s celebrated as progress. A worrisome amount of sound technicians do not take female musicians seriously and anyone from the unknown performer at a d.i.y. space to an international champion such as Grimes will have their instruments readjusted without permission. This is obviously unacceptable, and to be quite honest herstorically naïve. From Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire to Wendy Carlos, Clara Rockmore, and Laurie Spiegel female-bodied musicians have developed the tools, articulated the language, and laid the groundwork for what we broadly refer to as electronic music. There could arguably be no Kraftwerk, no Burial, no OK Computer without these pioneers. I would be thrilled to turn this into an exposition on the correlation between the outsider studies of sound synthesis and the marginalization of the female musician during an era that glorified the white male guitarist drunk on the appropriation of black music, but before I open that thinkpiece let’s take a mome to appreciate a powerful artist at our fingertips: Nancy Leticia.

Today we celebrate the release of Nancy Leticia’s Love Dream, a debut EP composed of seven movements that turn the outside world in. As the anticipated first release on Hot Sugar’s Noise Collector label Nancy’s collection of wondrous compositions is a voice within a larger discussion, and to only internalize the sonic surface of this EP would be a disservice to its process. For anyone who digs into the origins of this collection, or who possibly discovered Love Dream through an enthusiasm for the work of Hot Sugar, the world of associative music is a touchstone. Borrowing from the intersections of musique concrete and hip hop production, associative music is a meditation on our role as aural inhabitants within a world that is constantly sounding off at once. Car horns provoke anxiety and waves crashing on the sand induce relaxation while an empty plastic bag blowing down the sidewalk on a chilly afternoon might only amplify the most passive of existences. What Noise Collector, what Hot Sugar, and what Nancy Leticia encourage is a practice which collaborates with controllable and uncontrollable occurrences in an effort to develop a sound which is reflective of a perspective upon our modern condition. The practice of incorporating and processing these organic sounds into intentional compositions can subliminally invoke a tertiary relationship between the composer, the piece, and the listener. What was traditionally a piece of recorded music becomes a multi-dimensional space that incorporates a geography of feeling and place to become a sound, and a welcomed new field of experimentation in the reclamation of electronic music. Cover your ears with a warm pair of headphones and turn up "Le Big Mac", attempt to define the territories that are introduced, and then welcome Nancy Leticia… we’ve been waiting for you.