Introducing… Mokadem

Here at Bearded we aim to shed light on acts who don't necessarily have giant labels or muscley budgets waving banners behind them. This Introducing series will focus on artists who we think are great, regardless of how much hype surrounds them or where their origin story lays.

Bio
Name: Mokadem
Location: London, UK
Genre: Dance/House
Similar Artists: Laurel Halo, James Blake
Contact: Facebook, Twitter
Events: Mokadem EP out now

Hounslow's own house progeny, Mokadem – AKA Louisa Mokadem – is causing a ruckus in the world of dance music lately, mostly via a handful of carefully selected remixes and a fantastic debut EP. The Mokadem EP is a gorgeous anthology of modern, frontier-shattering dance cuts. It's the kind of electronic music that should dominate the airwaves but doesn't – though given a mite more time, success on a grand, global scale surely beckons: there's huge scope for this kind of forward-thinking dance music that's dominated by Katy Bs, Disclosures and Rudimentals.

'Pretend Ur Mine' is a shimmering, palatial bout of elegant beats and taper-fizzing TNT synths. Replete with crystal shards and fragments of diamond-hook, it's got that 'royal' vibe without belting out references to Maybach and Cristal and Dom Perignon and Lambrini and whatever else rich people guzzle. R&B-vocalled 'Dunt U' jitters and fractures like a film reel melting. There's steel pan clanks and the shuffling click of Azealia Banks' '212' – a gloriously addictive beat if there ever was one. The track simultaneously wrecks your mind and your body by making you bawl like a toddler denied a lollipop, and gyrate like seismic plates.



It's not just her original material that glistens with quality dew – her remix of perpetually dour and romantic nostalgic Lana Del Rey is wondrous. 'Gods and Monsters' turns from an insipid, glowering celebration of pretension into an intimate, tribal-beat gem. It's wild, feral, stricken with salivating wolves – it's not the polished agate Ms. Del Rey originally set free onto the world; Mokadem's harnessed its core energy, and focused it into a emotional outlet, creating a powerful electropop ballad in the process.

Mokadem is surely a name to watch out for in the coming months. Her fusing of glitchy ambience, R&B, deep house, electronica and dance pop is an exceptional combination, and one that people should be yelling from the rooftops to promote. If today's discotheques were pumped full of this, you can be damn sure that they'd be one-in-one-out by 11pm – Mokadem's the future of dance.