Lotic

Lotic, the project of Berlin-based artist J'Kerian Morgan, builds intense and provocative tracks that fuse ballroom culture, noise, R&B, and hip-hop, placing the producer among the leading voices in the experimental club community. Raised in Houston, Morgan relocated to Austin for studies in electronic music composition and saxophone at the University of Texas, where immersion in college-radio and club DJ sets led to a connection with Ben Aqua of the #FEELINGS label and the 2011 release of the debut EP More Than Friends. In 2012 Morgan moved to Berlin seeking a wider circle of collaborators, a step that coincided with early releases on Sci Fi & Fantasy—the single Sankofa/Glittering in January 2013 and the more intricate, melodic Fallout EP that October—while co-founding the Janus collective alongside fellow American expatriates such as producer and DJ M.E.S.H. and hosting monthly parties at the Kreuzberg venue Chesters.

A difficult breakup and a scaled-back Janus schedule in early 2014 freed time for focused work, resulting in the Damsel in Distress mixtape, assembled in two weeks and pairing Morgan’s dense, wrenching productions with an otherworldly reinterpretation of Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love.” The track “Heterocetera” from that mixtape was expanded into a 2015 EP for Tri Angle, while Janus issued the digital Agitations EP later the same year; during this period Lotic also supplied remixes for Björk, Dan Bodan, and Ben Frost. After a period of withdrawal that included homelessness, Morgan returned in 2018 with the full-length debut Power, marking the first inclusion of her own vocals and centering lyrics that probe questions of racial and sexual identity. Signing with Houndstooth in 2020 yielded the singles “Burn a Print” and “Cocky,” and the following year brought the second album Water, a meditation on love, loss, and resilience that further sharpened Lotic’s avant-garde pop aesthetic.