The acid line is the first thing through the door on this one, and it does not knock. Naughty opens with that 303 already coiled and snarling, and Marie Vaunt spends the next few minutes tightening the screw rather than letting up. I keep going back to the part where the kick locks in under the squelch and the whole thing stops feeling like a track and starts feeling like a tunnel you are being pulled down.
At 160 BPM it is fast, but it never feels rushed, just relentless, the acid bending and resharpening while a shadowy vocal hook drifts in and out of the dark. That tension is the whole record. It withholds the release and keeps the pressure on, which is exactly what you want from peak-time techno. Save it for the back half of a basement night, lights low, when the room has stopped checking the time.
Vaunt, a Japanese-American producer out of Los Angeles, has been deep in an acid run lately, and Naughty sits right next to her cuts That Acid and Techno Acid 303. If this is your first run-in with her, go dig through the rest at the Marie Vaunt archive, I will wait.
Naughty is out now as a Beatport exclusive via EXTATIC Records. Pull it up loud below.
