»DNA« is Rosaceae’s second album on Hamburg’s Pudel Produkte and follows the release of »Ava« on the British Xquisite Releases and a collaboration album with Ladonna for Neoprimitive. Thematically picking up on the themes that had already informed »Efia,« their last record for Pudel Produkte, »DNA« further explores Rosaceae’s interest in the interplay of sound and language while also adding skittering rhythms and thumping kickdrums to the mix. By leaning more towards dancefloor-oriented material, they add another layer to their music, but are less concerned with creating an air of aggressiveness than rather questioning cultural preconceptions of what constitutes such an aggressiveness on an aesthetic level. As a whole, the eight tracks on »DNA« not only reflect ideas of resistance, solidarity and internationalism, but also how they are mediated and their meanings are shaped by different types of mediation.
The title of the record refers to Anna Campbell, who joined the Women’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, YPJ for short) in their fight against daesh in Rojava and who was described as having »activism in her DNA.« Together with author Mazlum Nergiz’s liner notes, a prose poem called »Jumping from Tree to Tree,« and the portray of the Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf on the cover of the record, it creates an open and wide frame of reference for Rosaceae’s music and the multifarious narrative they create through the use of sampling, whether it is news reports on the struggles of the Kurdish all-female militia, interviews with survivors of the genocide against the Yezidi people or musical material.
»Mizgîn« opens up the record with the heavily treated sample that gives way to what sounds like an alarm signal, but could just as well be a distorted recording of a string instrument. It’s a fitting introduction to a record that plays with sonic polysemy: is the excessive use of rough, IDM-infused techno rhythms on »They Are so Afraid They Begin to Shake« meant to underline the looped phrase »but one of our women is worth a hundred of them« by way of musical force—or does it instead represent the terror that they had to rise against in the first place? And why do the statements by the women involved are often related to us by interpreters and news reporters throughout this record? What does it mean that on »I’ll Be Back Soon,« a TV presenter’s question whether or not the Kurdish freedom fighters’ principles are »worth taking part in violence for« receives no answer but a sharp intake of breath before the recording is cut off and a few more seconds of digital silence pass before the track eventually ends?
Whether Rosaceae seems to mimic the sound of rapid machine gun fire, indulges in gabber-informed beats or soothing, tinkling ambient sounds: by the end of »Berîtan,« an ambient piece that could as much provide solace as it may be understood as an elegy, it has become abundantly clear that even the most straightforward usages of certain musical elements or statements on this album are more complex than they may seem at first. Much like »Efia,« »DNA« poses uneasy questions but provides no easy answers—neither in sound nor in language.