OCTO OCTA - Sigils For Survival

For fifteen years now Maya Bouldry-Morrison has released records as Octo Octa. Active on the international scene, she now lives in the woods of New Hampshire together with her artistic and life partner Eris Drew. “Sigils For Survival” arrives seven years after her previous solo album and comes ten years after the moment Maya made public her journey as a transgender woman; she describes the record as a way of capturing that decade: a period in which she often felt she couldn't make it, and which she therefore felt the need to celebrate with an entire album. This is acid house that dances without limits across every kindred territory, from funky and progressive basslines to chords rooted in black music. The title reflects one of the artist's habits, that of drawing a sigil on the vinyl records she plays: not a mere graphic quirk, but a talisman meant to face life itself.

Her sister Hope Morrison, an artist based in New York, took these symbols and turned them into a series of paintings, which then became the cover art and visual material for the project. The same organic method is reflected in the songwriting: unlike in the past, when she worked with Ableton Live and all sorts of software, here Maya played and recorded everything on hardware machines, leaving the computer only for the final mixing stage. Above all, she chose never to correct the tracks by snapping them to a precise metronomic grid, letting the machines themselves dictate, through their own timing drift, the natural breath of the groove: a choice that winks at 1990s club culture and lends the whole record warmth and humanity. What stands out most are the more elaborate progressions and intricate rhythms: that's where the album flexes its muscles and truly makes itself heard.

The sonic palette isn't limited to synthesizers and drum machines, but also opens up to an occasional, carefully considered use of acoustic instruments, from the hand-pan to the recorder. The final blend swings between dense, layered episodes and sparser, ostensibly hypnotic moments: the former are far more convincing, because in the latter the mantra remains a whisper and the spell never quite takes hold. But when Maya skilfully weaves together trance arpeggios, breakbeat touches and pulsing bleeps that pile up in joyful chaos, that's where the magic truly takes shape: physical, sweaty tracks that thrive on an almost tribal energy under a dawn of fury and brotherhood. Caught between astral excess and synthetic jungles, Octo Octa's latest effort convinces most when it becomes flesh and blood, less so when it stays suspended in its own rituals.

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02/07/2026