Maya Bouldry-Morrison has spent most of the past two years holed up in her New Hampshire log cabin, exploring the ritualistic nature of club music—the way it can lift you into heightened states of being, for example, or serve as an equalizer on a sweaty dancefloor. During that time, the DJ and producer, known as Octo Octa, released several projects born from her own spiritual experiences, some of which were more liberating than others. Since coming out as transgender in 2016, she has used elements of classic house and techno to engage with radical ideas around identity, freedom, community, and love. Her 2019 EP For Lovers meditates on intimacy, with slow-burning tracks inspired by deep, physical connection. And her celebratory album Resonant Body spins gleefully into rave’s open arms.
Her newest EP, She’s Calling, is the final piece of this transcendental puzzle and invites us to join her in journeying inward—to heed the calls of our inner spirits and seek a higher consciousness. It’s heady stuff to tackle in a little 20-minute disc, but nobody said psychedelic music must drag on. Besides, there’s something approachable about this tight, unstuffy format that feels digestible and just right.
It helps that Bouldry-Morrison is a master at nesting far-out ideas in the comfort of dance music. By grounding her expansive productions in the sticky stylings of house, techno, and UK rave, she’s able to coax us further into the depths of our subconscious. In her hands, even the most disorienting U-turns seem natural and exciting, like a detour you were destined to have. When the tracks eventually reach peak trip, they feel less like tumbling down a rabbit hole and more like uncovering a universal truth.
Of all the releases in this series, She’s Calling is the most eager to subvert conventional club frameworks. The songs burst with dizzying, mismatched sound effects—old-school record scratching, ecstatic acid squelches, and woodsy buzzes and chirps—and seem to zig-zag, fizzle, and balloon without warning. But there’s a reason Bouldry-Morrison has brought these disparate sounds together. When the smoky, strobe-lit warehouse shuffler “Goddess Calling” joins forces with what sounds like an Esalen drum circle, she uses shimmering, stuttering synths as connective tissue. As you listen to these two scenes seamlessly converge—skittering rave-y echoes into hypnotic tribal drums—the distance between them starts to dissolve. By spins four, five, and six, it feels like they’ve been connected all along.
On “Find Your Way Home,” Bouldry-Morrison hits the gas. With the charge and zeal of a deranged Uber driver, she picks you up in one place and drops you off across town. The joyride in between—an immaculate eight-minute blur of throwback breakbeats, distorted chanting, and lounge-y house, capped off by an engulfing acid breakdown—is remarkably smooth given the territory it covers, a testament to the meticulousness of her work. The song, written pre-pandemic, was meant to soundtrack her own inner journeys and help listeners access new psychedelic frontiers. Now, after a disorienting year in quarantine, it feels more like a tribute to our collective mental fortitude.
“Spell for Nature” isn’t billed as a song but an evocation—her summoning of a meaningful, mind-altering memory. Details are scarce, but we’re told the experience revealed something “enveloping and eternal,” a presence Bouldry-Morrison had always suspected was there. Using poetry to narrate this metaphysical interaction, she re-casts nature in goddess form. “There’s a light in the center of the woods/A bright fire seen through the trees,” she says over chiming piano. “You’ve been listening your entire life/She’s calling.” It’s deeply moving to hear the artist’s voice on tape—stripped back, undistorted, calm, a reminder of how far she’s had to go to get here. Committed to song, her experience is given new weight, transformed from a fleeting epiphany into an enduring personal affirmation.
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