Mavi Veloso smeared the club scene in erotic self-reclamation with DLites, taken from the seminal EP Her Blossoming Delights. After a glitchy intro that shakes you right out of your comfort zone, the dancefloor-ready revelation of mind-altering mantras versed through bilingual vocals starts to take hold around the experimental time signatures that ensnare you in the volatile rhythms.
Nothing is safe in DLites, and the innovative siren made that so much more than a design flaw. It’s a thematic device developed to disjoint the dancefloor as she embraces the cultivated chaos of a production that keeps the momentum pulsing through beats sharp enough to make trip-hop rhythms seem on an even keel.
As an anthem of liberation, DLites sensually caresses all the right spots while ticking every box expected from a voice as viscerally ungovernable and ideologically potent as Mavi Veloso. The club aesthetics become entangled with deeper cartographies of transfeminine desire and resistance, conjuring a mythos rooted in personal power and mythic decadence as DLites unravels.
Pulling threads of influence from Brazilian trans icon Cláudia Wonder and reworking her immersive performance art project Her Delights into a sonic manifesto, the Netherlands-based Brazilian polymath made DLites a space for both radical disorientation and rooted liberation. From the deconstructed vocals to the layered glitches and baile funk ruptures, Veloso makes you question where your body begins and the beat ends.
DLites is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.
Review by Amelia Vandergast
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