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After a tumultuous 2020, Brittnee Moore was feeling drained. Amid Covid-19 surges and lockdowns, Moore, who records as bbymutha, faced a series of difficulties: After dropping her debut Muthaland, she retired from music and reneged within months; lost her cat and her brick-and-mortar shop; and discovered black mold in her home. By 2021, she was waist-deep in a creative rut. After her brief withdrawal from the industry, she’d released a steady drip of loosies and EPs, all uploaded without fanfare to her Bandcamp page. Despite building a large cult following, she still wasn’t feeling artistically fulfilled. At the end of an overseas tour, she stayed in London for a few weeks to work on music. A bleary night in a European drag club opened her ears to UK club music, a sound she wanted to explore further. These sessions laid the groundwork for sleep paralysis, which marries the trunk-rattling sounds of Southern rap music to the frenetic, body-buzz pulse of the English rave scene. It’s an inspired combination that gels beautifully, rekindling the fire Moore thought was long extinguished. It’s an immediately engaging and intense listen, its apocalyptic beats and frank lyrics feeling like the unremitting push of a hydraulic press. Moore’s trademark Tennessee thump, deployed on songs like “gun kontrol” and “final girl,” works remarkably well alongside the pupil-dilating jungle of “piss!” or the hyperactive breakbeat LYAM + Fion Orrell provide on “tony hawk.” Her lyrics are as unspari