If there’s one word that could encompass all of Samantha Poulter’s output as Logic1000, it’s warmth. Over six productive years, the Sydney-born, Berlin-based DJ and producer has evolved into one of dance music’s most intriguing talents, with a refined, enveloping sound that’s indebted to decades of house music history.
Her 2018 debut EP, Logic1000, was released in December 2018, when she briefly went by the name DJ Logic. Its centrepiece track, DJ Logic Please Forgive Me, winningly sampled R&B singer Deborah Cox over a clean, hard-hitting bassline that beamed with love for house-meets-UK bass artists like Joy Orbison and Pearson Sound. The track caught the ear of scene tastemaker Four Tet, who played it early in his 2019 Coachella set – about as coveted an endorsement as exists in this corner of electronic music.
While the Logic1000 EP had a skittish, everything-at-the-wall feel, its follow-up, 2021’s You’ve Got The Whole Night To Go, saw Poulter settle into a focused groove, charting a direct line from deep house to UK funky to rhythmic techno. Throughout the rolling lockdowns of 2021, Logic1000 released a string of luminescent, vaguely melancholic house cuts including YourLove and What You Like (with Malaysian-Irish producer Yunè Pinku), whose rich synth pads, shuffling bass and gauzy vocals ached for the dancefloor.
The Logic1000 sound feels most at home in Europe, so it’s fitting Poulter has settled in Berlin with her husband and career-long creative partner Thomas McAlister, AKA Big Ever. On social media and in interviews, Poulter is candid about her own mental health struggles and balancing motherhood (the couple had a daughter in 2022) with a creative life. This openness also extends to her Therapy podcast alongside DJ and presenter Heléna Star, and her decision to host a day party in Berlin last year for ravers who, like her, value a good night’s rest.
All this has set the stage for Logic1000’s debut album, Mother, out 22 March via her own Therapy label. Described by Poulter as “a love letter to house music”, the 12-track set was preceded by the vocal-led singles Promises, featuring Rochelle Jordan, and Self to Blame, featuring Kayla Blackmon – the most polished and pop-leaning Logic1000 productions to date.
Elsewhere, the album shifts confidently between moods without losing its four-four pulse, with each track distinctive enough to have dancers reaching for Shazam in the club. The kinship of shared experience is deeply felt throughout – as Poulter put it to Billboard, “Since becoming a mother, I feel this overwhelming sense of womanhood and sisterhood.” On Every Lil’, with Melbourne’s DJ Plead and Miami-based vocalist MJ Nebreda, we hear Logic1000 in a thrilling new mode, setting Nebreda’s hypnotic vocals against swinging percussion reminiscent of Nicolas Jaar.
It’s rare for dance artists to channel the raw messiness of life into something as generously life-giving as Mother, which seals Logic1000’s place in the long lineage of house music.
This month Guardian Australia also listened to …
Mildlife – Chorus (1 March)
More forays into the cosmos from the esteemed jazz collective. All the kitsch of the space age – bleeps, bloops, synths floating to the high heavens – set to the glitter and glamour of the discotheque.
Ben Frost – Scope Neglect (1 March)
“Metallica meets John Carpenter meets Hans Zimmer” was my first thought listening to this new album from the industrial experimental composer behind the soundtrack to Netflix’s Dark and Ridley Scott’s Raised By Wolves.
Good Morning – Good Morning Seven (22 March)
The Melbourne duo celebrates a decade in music with wry, charismatic, self-effacing paeans to the pain and pleasure of existence. “I’m 30 and I have no backup plan,” band member Liam Parsons told us in our Headline Act interview. “If this doesn’t work out I’m screwed.”
The Veronicas – Gothic Summer (22 March)
“Gothic summer” could probably describe everything the Veronicas have ever made – the kind of glaring pop-punk which burns like noonday sun.
Kita Alexander – Young in Love (22 March)
We’ve rarely been so spoiled for sugary pop. The ascendant 28-year-old’s debut is a bit King Princess, a bit Dua Lipa, a bit Olivia Rodrigo and a whole lot of fun. Best You Ever Had is a cheerfully spiteful break-up song, complete with disco strings and a very Phil Collins drum beat before the irresistible chorus.
