There is a sample of Ikonika clearing her throat about a minute and a half into the London producer's I Make Lists EP, her first long-form release since debut album Contact, Love, Want, Have on Hyperdub in 2010. It's a let's-get-down-to-business kind of throat clearing, an aural rolling back of the sleeves before things kick off. And Ikonika really does kick off on I Make Lists. It's an entirely different beast from Contact, Love, Want, Have, which was a highly personal knitting together of her experience growing up on video games and R&B pop, getting into metal and becoming a drummer, and embracing-- and being embraced by-- the then wholly south-London dubstep scene.
Born from memories and echoes of garage, dub, and drum'n'bass, dubstep was the first anti-genre genre and, it can and has been argued, lost its way by becoming a genre. That rigidity is something Ikonika has always been wary of; her music is acutely aware of the limitations of borders. As if to make a point, I Make Lists reaches beyond the London scene to the global club underground she has become a crucial part of over the last couple of years, both as a DJ and owner of the Hum + Buzz label she runs with partner Optimum, releasing records by New York-via-Chicago's Brenmar and Sydney's Dro Carey.
Flight lines, lasers, and firework trails criss-cross throughout the record; it is bold, ballsy and high on adrenaline. There is plenty of acid, funk, gnarly bass, and yet more evidence of Ikonika's wily way with melody and synths that scissor-kick like hyperactive, high-pitched Middle Eastern rhythms. There is a sense that this is a record that would go off in Tel Aviv, in Cape Town, in Mexico City, in Buenos Aires. It also has a kinship with Kingdom's Fade to Mind label in New York as well as with Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990's Night Slugs in London, both proponents of this most borderless of new club music. Most of all, I Make Lists feels free.
Ikonika lives on the outskirts of London, minutes from Heathrow, and it's this proximity to escape, to worlds beyond your own, that throbs strongest on I Make Lists. The album artwork is an aubergine sky filled with paper airplane-like flying objects, fantasy versions of the crafts that cut across the skyline above the purpose-built studio in the garden of her house. Continuing the theme, closing track "PR812" is named after a Philippine Airlines flight that was hijacked back in 2000 by a perpetrator who robbed passengers at gunpoint before, incredibly, making his escape by parachute. It's also the most sensually electric track on the record: taut, mournful, and ever-reaching. Which leads us back to the throat-clearing, because ultimately, for all its thrills and spills, I Make Lists is the sound of Ikonika getting ready for her next move.
