Alchemical Sisters is out today, and it is the first full album from the project Eris Drew and Maya Bouldry-Morrison (Octo Octa) built for writing music together. The self-titled debut double album lands on Interdimensional Transmissions as IT 57, just in time for the label's Samhain XXVI weekend in Detroit. If you know them from all-vinyl B2B sets that refuse to sit still, this is that energy turned into eight tracks of their own.
Cabin to Detroit
The label's own notes put the recording in the forests of New Hampshire. Maya and Eris emptied the master bedroom of their cabin, sealed it as a working room, and spent a year sleeping on the studio floor while they wrote. Dulcimers and other ancestral instruments sat next to turntables, older machines and newer tools. They describe the sound themselves: "psychedelic chaos, acid rollers, and big beat, channeled through hardware instruments and animated by love, touch, rhythm, and spiritual fire."
Then they took the sessions to Detroit. BMG mixed the record in the Interdimensional Laboratory for two weeks in deep winter, running the tracks through a high-end console, transformers and tubes so the music would hit the body before it hit the brain. That hardware mix is part of why this feels like an IT record and not a bedroom dump.
Eight tracks, double vinyl
The sequence runs A1 "This is How it Should Be Done," A2 "We've Seen Great Power," B1 "Double Acid," B2 "Anytime Sisters Slide," C1 "One 2 One 2 Three Four," C2 "Did You Know," D1 "Song For New Hampshire" and D2 "Why Not Dream." Digital and a black 2xLP are up on the IT Bandcamp and the project's own Alchemical Sisters Bandcamp. The label also posted preview clips on its SoundCloud.
This is not their first shared credit. The project grew out of a four-day rewrite of Special Interest's "Disco III," then a Paramida remix for Love On The Rocks and the original "Yellow Acid" for Dekmantel's anniversary box. The album is the first time they get a full side of vinyl under the Alchemical Sisters name.
See it live
Interdimensional Transmissions has them booked for their debut performance at Samhain XXVI in Detroit on October 30 and 31. For a label that has spent decades wiring Detroit hardware culture to the dancefloor, putting this debut on that stage is the full-circle move the press notes keep pointing at.
Our call
This one is Surfacing. Two of the sharpest vinyl DJs in dance music just turned a year in a forest cabin into a debut double album on one of Detroit's essential labels, out the same day we are writing this. Start with the SoundCloud previews, then grab the 2xLP while the first pressing is still sitting there.
Building a listening setup around records like this? Our best turntables for beginners and gifts for record collectors cover the hardware side. For more long-form electronic listening, start with our ambient music starter guide and our gifts for music producers.
Listen / buy on Bandcamp · Preview on SoundCloud · IT release page · Eris Drew
