Get to know Perel, a master of precision-engineered German hypnotism

When was the last time you found yourself on a dancefloor pondering the links between spirituality and hedonism? And we mean properly pondering, not just pontificating in the queue for the bar because the signal’s dodgy and Instagram won’t refresh. If the answer doesn’t immediately spring to mind, Annegret Fiedler’s debut LP ‘Hermetica’ might just give you pause for thought.

“The Egyptian-Greek didactic texts, in particular the hermetic writings, had a big influence on on how my album formed and grew,” Berlin-based Fiedler says, referencing the second-century tracts that sought to explain the intricacies and oddities of nature, the cosmos, and divinity itself. “I learned to follow my intuition and to trust in the natural flow of things. I started to allow imperfections as a result of being human, because I got so tired of perfectionism overall.”

Deeply hypnotic, the album –released on James Murphy’s DFA – is an intense, churning, blackest-ever-black run through nine elongated, juddering bolts from the murky blue. Sitting somewhere between a more melodically inclined take on Sandwell District’s chiaroscuro techno and a darker interpretation of the sweetly melancholy, lightly theatrical synth-pop of Eurythmics, it is motorik, confident and sleek, machine music of the most finely tuned kind.