Much is made in current dance culture about electronic music as an outlet for queer joy. Earlier this year, for example, when Charli XCX declared that “the dancefloor is dead” in her latest news-cycle-consuming PR stunt, it provoked worldwide outcry from DJs and producers who argued that denying dance music’s modern ubiquity robs Black and queer communities of the ecstatic temples that they built, across decades, as an antidote to adversity. And while that retort isn’t inaccurate, it can be a little unintentionally reductivist. What about queer pain, queer sorrow, queer fear, queer anxiety? These emotions are just as central to the Black queer experience as joy, and some of the most interesting electronic music—Lotic’s eerie experimental R&B noise, SHERELLE’s breakneck acid house, Jasmine Infiniti’s dark industrial techno—comes from producers who are unafraid to peer into the obscured corners of their own identity and reflect back what they find.
Dion McKenzie, who produces and DJs under the name TYGAPAW, is one such artist. Born in Mandeville, Jamaica, and based in Brooklyn, their sprawling techno compositions take cues from dancehall, experimental electro, industrial, hardcore, and footwork to plumb the extremes of Black club music. Their third album, the acronymically titled Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide, takes the form of an at times exuberant, at times unsettling amusement park dark ride through the history of the African diaspora, dragging you through room after room of piercing synths and bone-rattling beats. The album’s name speaks to TYGAPAW’s desire to build a world founded on Black liberation. The wrath and unease in the music isn’t meant to be purely abrasive—it’s a healthy reaction to the reality they wish to transcend.
On the album’s first track, “Can I live”, Nigerian-American artist and poet Precious Okoyomon recites a litany that begins as a call for self-betterment: “May I never be afraid of anyone, especially myself,” she says, over a low-boil, droning synth loop. Soon, she begins speaking of astral projections and anti-government activism, before she implores the listener to “fall into ashes … mercy, and forgiveness.” The track intertwines eerie, crackling reverb with the poem’s cathartic mood—so when the song’s coda erupts in grimy, muffled bass and sandpapery footwork beats, the release feels narratively on point yet also somehow restrained, like the hesitant beginning of a spiritual journey rather than the end.
Synthwork is one of TYGAPAW’s fortes, and they frequently use sharp frequencies, jittery arpeggios, and ghostly, atonal lines to maintain an atmosphere of cold paranoia. On “Helicopter hovers over my Crown Heights Apartment,” the synths sound like the siren of some cyberpunk flightcraft, while the acidic drum’n’bass beat mimics the rusty blades of a disused chopper. It’s like listening to a scene from a sci-fi thriller, although it still rises and falls with the timing of a dancefloor track. “M32 Riddim” draws you into a similar world: Air raid alarms drop in and out of a propulsive beat while a bouncing bass blasts through the chaos, more of a rhythmic seizure than a groove.
All of the vocals on Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide are spoken-word and delivered by Black female artists, like a Greek chorus, providing an array of stark and personal perspectives on race and gender. The album’s two standout tracks are arresting for opposite reasons. On “Exorcise the Language of Dominion,” TYGAPAW finally lets us experience the aforementioned queer joy, as artist, DJ, and writer Juliana Huxtable quasi-raps surreal lines like “If I throw my pussy in the air, it’ll turn into sunshine? Ok…” It maintains the album’s intensity, but its sense of play is a welcome respite. On “Effects of Resistance,” the South African scholar Khanyisile Mbongwa monologues about the diasporic nature of the Black community, tracing its history from antiquity to the present day, from the slave trade to apartheid. After 45 minutes of brain-splitting techno, the song is sobering, and it’s the first track where TYGAPAW takes their foot off the pedal, keeping the synths to an ambient growl and letting you sit with the gravity of Mbongwa’s words.
TYGAPAW started their gender transition in 2023, right as they were beginning work on Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide. The record holds the energy of someone coming to terms with big questions, reveling in the cacophony of true self-expression. It’s loud and bright, but it’s not an easy listen, which makes the closer, “Black Trans Masculine Experience (Instrumental)” indispensable to the album’s story. Here the synths twinkle, gently looping a simple melody, and when the beat drops in, it’s a blossoming flourish rather than a driving force. While soothing, the song isn’t merely a comedown. Traveling through the album’s darkness is necessary to arrive at this sense of peace and with every synth stab and pounding beat, TYGAPAW gets closer to ushering in the world they wish to inhabit.
