The word Lotic refers to flowing water and is used to categorize bodies of water. Lotic waters range from springs to major rivers. The definining factor is that the water is moving. Lotic is the moniker of Berlin-based, American-born musician J’Kerian Morgan, who just put out his first release on Tri Angle records, an EP called Heterocetera. Under the name Lotic, Morgan makes spooky and celestial industrial tracks that stutter and stop but always keep flowing.

Heterocetera succeeds in the ways it rises above its industrial roots to become something more scary, like a robot that has accrued too much intelligence and struck back against its creators on a starry night. The swiveling cranes that populate the tracks sound as if they were screaming. They work with celestial synths to elevate the songs beyond their crunchy industrial beats. At first it feels easy to compare Heterocetera to Arca’s work; both feature glitchy sounds, sexy synth melodies, and a tendency to imply the beat rather than leave it fully exposed. But where Arca tends to work with and around space, Lotic’s music feels more grounded, working as a single entity. It’s fitting then that the EP’s cover shows an odd skeletal creature. It looks familiar, like a mosquito, but also weird and impossible to understand.