The opening chord progression rings out like a ceremonial call to awaken. Piano keys lament with sorrowful intent, setting the tone for an aural odyssey of profound introspection and creative rebirth. This is "DECAY-ATTACK-RELEASE," the latest avant-garde offering from Kenyan musical vanguard Bakhita - a resounding artistic riposte to the struggles and discrimination they have endured in their nation's music industry as a queer, non-binary voice.
Much like Kenya itself, which cast off the shackles of colonial subjugation in 1963 after a protracted struggle for independence, Bakhita has undertaken a journey to emancipate their artistic expression from the confines of an insular industry rife with bias and exclusion. A two-year hiatus allowing for a period of recalibration and rejuvenation culminates with this hypnotic, genre-obliterating composition - a exercising of true creative sovereignty.
"DECAY-ATTACK-RELEASE" emerges as the phoenix from the ashes of Bakhita's lineage of resistance and perseverance. Dramatic piano refrains bleed into caustic synthesized atmospheres, conjuring a liberation fantasia birthed from the anguish of being denied opportunities and subjected to backlash for daring to "align all my work with marginalized communities as well as my core values: expression, self-love and healing." This deeply personal artistic manifesto seeks to uproot the very foundations of systemic oppression.
The merging of Bakhita's own studio prowess with the deft co-production talents of Justin Pflughaupt and mixing/mastering psychonaut Kiminia yields a compositional bricolage that ebbs, flows and transmutes in unpredictable intervals. As if choreographing a metaphysical rite of passage, the expansive track mirrors the very ethos at its core - an endless cyclical process of growth, decay and regeneration at both the personal and cosmic level.
This soul-baring invocation serves as both a rapturous salve to soothe the wounds of alienation while doubling as a radical call for solidarity and self-determination in artistic spaces. Like the newly independent Kenyan nation shrugging off the trappings of oppressive colonial forces decades prior, Bakhita channels their transcendent self-actualization into raw sonic liberation.
With "DECAY-ATTACK-RELEASE," this uncompromising gender transcendent artist does not simply usher in a new phase of unbridled musical expression - they incant a esoteric spiritual insurrection aimed at deconstructing the oppressive dogma and discriminatory norms of the very industry that once rejected them. This is more than a sultry electronic rhapsody, it's a profound reclamation of identity and agency reverberating in defiant solidarity with all marginalized creators. Let freedom ring in emphatic, syncopated rapture.
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