Nima Aghiani and
Sara Bigdeli Shamloo) trilogy of albums with the most stunning release of the set. Constantly in flux without ever feeling frantic,
Placebo is a masterwork of electronic composition, an album that finds bloody, volatile humanity in 9T Antiope’s dust-glistened soundscapes.
On the vocal-heavy “Dose I: Danse Macabre,” 9T Antiope deliver a set of theatrical vignettes, the music sharply jutting between sultry grooves and hollow drones, from song to poem to speech and back. Shamloo shapeshifts from narrator to narrator alongside these musical cuts, delivering melismatic singing, gremlin-like spoken word and more. Throughout “Danse Macabre,” she outlines an extended metaphor between the human existence and that of horses, honing in on shared dreams of abolition and liberty: “We neigh like horses refusing to be tamed / Yet our neighs neither break the rhythm nor the code.”