Kamasi Washington Frazer Harrison / Getty

The second leg of Washington’s North American tour kicked off in Seattle earlier this week, playing to a sold out Showbox. In spite of an increasingly chatty crowd, opener Victory Boyd set the stage for the Afrocentric night ahead, singing about love, music, and the black struggle. She eventually grabbed the crowd’s attention with her rendition of “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone. It only veered slightly off track when she asked for audience participation, encouraging us to sing “You know how I feel” over and over again. The Seattle crowd sounded like a weak chorus of embarrassed schoolchildren, getting quieter and quieter. Boyd worked with what she had—a mark of a truly great musician.

Orchestrating subtly hallucinogenic techno odysseys like it's nbd. courtesy of Kayla Waldorf

Over the last five years or so, Seattle's techno scene has burgeoned, with several great producers and DJs flourishing both onstage and in the recording studio: Raica, Archivist, IVVY, Cavernous, Simic, Qoqo Roboqs, P L L, død, Fugal (when he's not abroad). Now it's time once again to focus on Aos (aka Kayla Waldorf), who's playing the release party for her new EP, Violent Light (released on limited-edition 12-inch vinyl and in digital form). Its three tracks (plus a remix by Fugal) reveal Waldorf's refinement of her music's steely poise, savvy dynamics, and acute ear for interesting textures within a minimal-techno context.

"Violent Light" represents the apotheosis of Aos' instinct for creating driving rhythms accompanied by timbres that trick you into believing you've become lit up with a stadium's worth of klieg lights. Anyone who still thinks minimal techno equals dry, 4/4 monotony needs to check the subtly hallucinogenic odysseys Aos orchestrates here. "Violent Light" gradually ascends to a quasi-rave-anthem revelation, its tonalities and oscillations reminding me of Underworld's "Rez"—the gold standard of muted, acidic, '90s-era hedonism. But "Violent Light" is more overtly a surefire 4 am floor-filler. Waldorf hysteria ensues.