Kate Simko

“Gamelan / Margie’s Groove” is another offering of Kate Simko’s gracefully appointed minimal house, a digital-only release for Spectral Sound. With these two cuts, Simko gives minimalism a good name, inviting each sound to discretely rub elbows with its neighbors before it skips off into the ether.

“Gamelan” is an exercise in elegant hypnosis: a suite of tasteful percussion passages that, through careful mutations and recombinations, arrange themselves into a polyrhythmic symphony. A glassy clang rings like a jostled crate of milk bottles; synthesizers conjure automotive whirrs and distant rumbles; and a conga-augmented kick pattern pushes the listener towards the inevitable comedown.

“Margie’s Groove,” meanwhile, is the A-side’s sexier evil twin. “Margie’s” reprises the syncopated, sinewy funk of Simko’s She Said EP, riding a relentless tribal thump through a field of call-and-response slinky melodies and sharply isolated hand claps.