Anyone following Alina Astrova’s work since the Hype WIlliams days (us) will be all over this, finding her in that skewed but earnest pop mode that we first caught a glimpse of on a grainy Hype Williams vhs doing Sade’s The Sweetest Taboo around 2010 as featured on the Do Roids And Kill E’rything 7” for Second Layer.

Higher Powers runs 6 tracks / 20 minutes deep of material you’ll know intimately if you grabbed the files way back when, but which will scratch a very 2010’s sorta itch for the uninitiated. ‘Light Up’ is one of her best, all martial/slowed amens, unstable pads and room recorded vox that revel in questionable fidelity, in the best way. ‘B.M.W.’ is more hi-def, a clipped soundsystem anthem with gloriously fuzzed arcade machine synths, ‘Obsession 2’ feels like one of those tunes that spends 4 minutes trying to figure out what time signature it’s in, while Scratcha-hookup ‘A World in Danger III’ is the most polished thing here, ending just as it gets going.