COVER ARTWORK FOR HERDE BY BLU ALOE ON DOWNWARDS

Boomkat Review:

​New from Downwards: Blu Aloé ventures an EP of stark greyscale contrasts and doom techno, advancing on the “chaos and fragility” of her self-released ’Liminal Space' album from last year.

New Zealand-born but long shaped by Köln’s cultural research platform, Brutalism, and Berlin techno chambers, Blu Aloé possesses a steely grasp of modular synthesis and dank aromas that feels out a bind between hermetic concentration and resonant decay. Her first bow on Karl O”Connor’s label explores her spectral voice at the crossroads of industrial experimentation, drone and noise techno, on a plane between Maria Zerfall’s cult ‘80s DIY works, Anne Gillis or Eros’ feel for haunted space, and the rugged charges of Tuning Circuits.

Where Aloé’s self-released ‘Liminal Space’ (2025) was defined by a state of suspension between worlds, her ‘Herde’ EP more explicitly hews to techno impulses, albeit stealthily, in the queasy upswell of industrial machinery on ‘Herde I’, and the soggy thrum of a ‘Herde II’ calling to mind early Kareem on Zhark in its bloody-minded line of thought. The 2nd half better reveals her voice, keening thru vast air akin to the spatial fascinations of Aicher’s ‘Defensive Acoustics’, before wrapping up with a darkly sublime kiss-off in the vaulted sepulchral space invoked by standout closer ‘Herde IV’.