It wasn’t too long ago that Marie Davidson swore off techno. Best known for her sardonic takedowns of club culture, the Montreal producer turned off her synths in favour of a more analogous approach shortly after unleashing the cult classic Work It, and its even buzzier Soulwax retooling. Now after four years of space-rock deviation with her band L’Œil Nu, Davidson has returned to the dancefloor with venomous intent.
Contrarian is a masterclass in calculated chaos – whispered hieroglyphs float over tech-noir synthesisers, while a relentless acid line writhes beneath like a live wire. The track makes its intentions clear from the get go, opening with a floor shuddering 4/4 sledgehammer before unravelling in a surreal myriad of directions.
Created together with Soulwax and Pierre Guerineau, this is the second glimpse of the upcoming project City of Clowns, Davidson’s first proper club record since 2018’s Working Class Woman. If Contrarian is anything to go by, she hasn’t lost her tooth-grinding intensity during her hiatus from the club. If anything, the time away has sharpened her edge. While contemporaries like Jlin and Jessy Lanza remixed her into softer shapes during her absence, Contrarian feels like a statement of intent – less a return to form than a mutation of it.
