As humans, our truest selves are sometimes buried away, not for public, nor even private observation. For instance, one might meet Brooklyn’s Sarah Lutkenhaus on a surface level, and never, or at least not immediately, know the Lutkie side of her, that being the modular synthesizer and noise phreak who has graced countless underground stages over the last few years, and who just released her debut tape via No Rent Records. Perhaps appropriately titled, The Dominator Is Cuddled Inside Me reveals an all-too-suppressed underbelly of humanity—a nagging, gnawing “Mr. Hyde” to whom we hardly ever submit because to do so would be “improper.” Lutkie’s breathy intonations, gasping and wheezing on opener “It Resides,” creates an immediate, almost unbearable claustrophobia. You want to jump out of your own useless* skin. And she allows for such an escape with an introduction of impossibly crescendoing static, like what might be the last thing your ear registers on a plane destined for a cityside crash. No, nothing feels good here—those little hairs on the back of your neck stand up and look to jump to their own end. The maddening, grumbling drone of track 2, “It Rejects,” fills the mind to the brim with misgiving, spotlighting how bare and barren its predecessor was, wholly consuming you and slamming the gate shut behind you. “You in it now,” she seems to say, as wailing and moaning penetrate through a horrific climbing synthetic arpeggio, an alarm system for your mind set aflame.
Percussion hammers down on “It Reckons” and “It Remains,” like what the fiftieth hour of water torture might sound like, only it’s just the your subconscious doing its thing. Her voice rings indecipherably over everything, with otherworldly pain and rage. What has this second self seen? A plague of fluttering electronics courses through your headspace, and you’re left with what? Yourself. Closer “It Reverses,” is a culmination of everything that came before it, and a dooming force for everything that will come after. Sputtering deathbreath becomes effected, agonal screaming, all amid grim low-end, and then, like everything, it cuts to black. You feel everything with this tape, and by its end, you’re left with a stronger-than-ever desire, a need, to give way to those primal urges that you’ve tried so hard to bury your entire life.
Oh, and while in quarantine, DO check out the rest of No Rent’s catalogue.