Bézier’s Body Tension / Körperspannung enters its second year with ‘B.D.S.M.’, the debut recording from XELTA—a new collaboration between vocalist and performer Sharlese Metcalf and producer Bruno Coviello, known for his bliscord project and former work alongside Light Asylum and more recently composer for the film’s soundtrack ‘My Brother’s Killer’—which recently premiered at SXSW.
This EP is five tracks of precision-engineered industrial, EBM, and darkwave. The music carries the body-first ferocity of Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb—pulse-driven, commanding, relentless—but filtered through something distinctly femme: a leather-gloved hand on the frequency dial. Think the dancefloor of a Chicago Medusa night, 1987. Think ritual. Think consent as choreography.
B.D.S.M. opens the record with a power exchange already in motion. Metcalf's vocals arrive as commands—spoken, precise, syncopated against a delay echo that throws each word back like an afterimage. Coviello's production doesn't accompany her; it responds. Call and response as dominance and submission, built into the architecture of the music itself.
EXQUISITE S3RVIC3 is the record's most visceral moment—percussion that punctuates the air like a crack of leather, rhythm used not as framework but as sensation. There is genuine playfulness here beneath the intensity, a knowing wit running through the whipcrack and chain. It hurts in the best way and knows it.
MYY KONTROLL offers a brief reprieve—not a release, but a change of register. The pace pulls back, the approach becomes more deliberate, more methodical. The intensity doesn't leave; it migrates into melody and rhythm and texture, held there with a tighter grip than anything that came before.
The Radio Void Remix of EXQUISITE S3RVIC3 opens the architecture outward—Montreal cold pressing against Atlanta heat. The Anticipation Remix of B.D.S.M. closes the record exactly where the title promises: suspended, deliberate, expectant.
