Rikki G. Godd

***After a formative stint in the mythical sun of Los Angeles, Colin Blanton (Brin, casualshrine) returned to Chicago’s grey winters and suffocating summers in 2024, and he promptly set about creating a new persona that matched the muggy, claustrophobic, and paradoxically life-giving environment he found himself in. Recording under the name Rikki G. Godd, he applies the techniques he developed as an experimental percussionist to a quantized form of electronic music that seems to both hold the pressure of living in the city in highly contentious times and provides relief from them through the traditional release of dance music. The ugly industrial grind of Cost Of Living recalls the brick-scraping electronic music of Esplendor Geometrico, the righteous indignation of Muslimgauze, and the hyperkinetic shuddering of SHEET NOISE. This is dark music that is as distinctly Chicago; at times it feels equally brutal and rich, like coagulated blood scraped from Upton Sinclair’s abattoirs. But as with so much of the electronic music that's made Chicago famous, there's an obvious undercurrent of joy at work here, too, a form of transfiguration that can be read as a response to the viciousness if you like but that is completely inseparable from it. Put it on and dance in the showering sparks of a sputtering power plant on the bank of Lake Michigan.