I have been a fan of Natalie “Tusia” Beridze since I first heard her album Annulé several years ago.
Her latest release, “Pending” draws more from Annulé than it does her subsequent works, Size and Tears and The Other (both of which are a bit inconsistent but outstanding at their best).  I was less engaged with it originally than I expected to be, but once I got past my irrational hopes that it would contain more frantic piano pieces in the vein of Size and Tears’ CD1 (songs which I’ve had on repeat in my car for several months (a bad idea because they make it even harder for me to drive like a reasonable person)), it has grown on me to the point where it’s been on near constant repeat for the past month.  Tracks “Don’t Know Why”, “Good Night Tokyo” and “Legotek” are especially excellent.

Also recommended are her releases under the Nate Fisher pseudonym, which range from (less recommended) club tracks to  impressively complicated and hard techno (highly recommended) on such releases as donoteatonlsd.  These tracks are often attributed to Thomas Brinkmann as several of them were released on his max.ernst label, and were attributed only to T.B., but it should be obvious that it was always her, especially considering the stylistic similarities in her later releases (especially her upcoming -or maybe already released but impossible to find- release “dunno”) and her obvious vocals on some of the tracks.  My interpretation is that use of the Nate Fisher name was sort of a Wendy/Walter Carlos thing to get her music fairly judged in the still male-oriented world of dance music.  If that’s true, hopefully her apparent abandonment of the name means she’s more confident of being taken as seriously as she should be.

I’m glad she’s moved away from using just TBA as a moniker, as hopefully now I’ll be able figure out where she’s playing to see her live at some point (sorting through lists like this is fairly much impossible), but can we settle on a name?  I’ll likely continue renaming her tracks so they all are collected together in last.fm, but it seems that this release, her upcoming EP, and her soon-to-be released album on Monika are all under slightly different permutations.  I understand its useful to use slightly different names when releasing music in slightly different genres, but the effort does get a bit tiring sometimes.  Maybe a website to make these things easier to track down isn’t too much to ask for?  I’m guessing the tracks on her Myspace page are from her upcoming release on Monika as they weren’t on this last one?  I really don’t mean to complain too much, as her music is good enough that the time investment is worthwhile…