For those introduced to Nene H during the cycle of her debut album, Ali, you may associate her most closely with a style of techno that takes hard hitting austerity, and stirs it up with atmospheric ambience rooted in cultural pathos and emotional gravitas. The blue-tinged world of Ali, a cenotaph to her late father but also an ode to the culturally specific rituals of mourning and grief, revealed Nene H as far more than a firecracker club DJ. No, she is an auteur, using the beats and jagged slopes of techno to write her own story on her own terms. If Ali introduced us to Nene H the architect, then her latest EP, Trifecta, is a reminder that she’s still able to throw shit down, so to say. The concept is simple; a tribute to the three most influential cities in the producer’s life. There’s Istanbul, her hometown. Berlin, her present home base. And Copenhagen, her adoptive home. Across the EP’s three tracks, she channels the nightlife energy of each of these cities with ravishing flair, presenting us with a looser, more tongue in cheek perspective than the maudlin outlook of Ali.
This is most evident on the EP’s definitive standout, Fukken Lie. Her ‘ode’ to Berlin, the track sees Nene H and fellow Berliner Nik Mantilla team up to throw shade at the pretension of the city’s techno scene. Against a heart pounding, bouncing beat that feels akin to rushing, Mantilla offers a number of snarky asides that pull from the sort of things one might hear thrown into conversation at a club. You can’t help but chuckle at lines like “Is that water?”, “Do you have a lighter?”, or best of all; “I love your outfit… That was a fukken lie.” The whole thing is coated in a glossy sort of sass that makes it deliciously deviant. In fact, everything else on Trifecta is equally glossy, like freshly lacquered nails.
Download and stream Trifecta here
Hold Ud, Skat! trips along with a rubberised synthline and snatches of distorted vocals, like getting lost in a sea of bodies on a strobe-lit industrial dance floor. Meanwhile, Ring the Sirän, her ode to Istanbul, is closer in tonality to the darkness of Ali with its spectral vocal samples and tinge of Middle Eastern rhythms beneath the track’s breakneck trance beats. The music on Trifecta is incredibly textured and diverse for hard techno, and in some ways transcends this categorisation. That is perhaps Nene H’s greatest skill. There’s a truckload of personality in her music. She has an ability to diffuse influences from across club culture into her version of techno, while playing just enough within the boundaries that purists would find it hard to argue against her.
In the press release for Trifecta, the word community is mentioned with regards to each city that Nene H gives thanks to. For Istanbul, she wishes to give back to the community that raised her. For Berlin, she thanks the community that has helped her find her voice. And for Copenhagen, she honours a community from whom she has learnt invaluable lessons. Trifecta is perhaps not what you might expect a tribute record to sound like per se, but Nene H’s intentions are earnest. What transpires is not so much poetic, but a viscerally experiential look into these places from Nene H’s perspective. Trifecta runs like a three city party tour with Nene H as your playful (and entirely serious) guide.
Listen to Fukken Lie from Trifecta below.
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