★★★★☆
Wind Walker – connotations of wind in your hair, or flying on the wings of love, or a general leaning towards positive elevation, right? Wrong – very wrong actually. Cali native, New York spinner and now Montreal tenant, Stefny Winter is sploshing around in the muds of deep house and techno, bass spattering your ankles, and in keeping with aerodynamics, hitting you with chafing gusts. Opening two tracks “Baby Android” and “Squeeze” are a classic one-two to put you in the picture, the former a downpaced squelch undercut with enticing groove, the latter with its head up and travelling at speed through a long chrome-arched tunnel that in due course runs the length of the album.
Equal parts smooth ride and chugging big wheeler (cosmic disco “Blood Orange and Rose” doing both as it relies on strength and shimmer), Winter will hit home either way, and doesn’t mind taking her time over how direct she is; “Colors” wants to find its range first with a boom of beats, and “Soaked” does the same with whiplashes of bass, but these are no sneak attacks or pincer movements, more Winter picking up grip or letting herself sink a little in the aforementioned mud. Putting its hands all over bodies with an automaton grope, there’s significant pull to her orchestration of a machinated sexiness.
File under: Nina Kraviz, Lindstrom, Maceo Plex