The dancefloor is often seen as an escape—a zone dedicated to hedonism, frivolity, excess. That perspective isn’t limited to dance music’s critics; even some of club culture’s proponents subscribe to the view. But to think in such terms is a failure of imagination, a refusal to ask more of the sounds that move us. It’s precisely the kind of short-sightedness that has led to the gradual watering down of dance music in the commercial overground and the so-called underground alike, as it has been pulled from its roots in Black and queer communities.

On “Sixteen,” 700 Bliss—the Philadelphia duo of avant-club producer DJ Haram and poet/rapper/noise musician Moor Mother—remind us that a dancefloor can also be the site of catharsis; that a dancefloor is only a measure of what you bring to it. Here, that means trauma. “When I was 16/I called my mom on the phone/Said I ain’t never coming home,” growls Moor Mother at the song’s outset, over a beat that sounds like a torn speaker cone flapping in the wind. As Haram pricks at molten sub-bass with dry, scratchy percussion, Moor Mother loops her verses, reeling off a mantra-like litany of pain: “I’m tired of the bullshit/The world’s so violent/I’m just my own island.” Fixating on a string of assonant rhymes—“lyin’,” “dyin’,” “blindin’”—she homes in on a chilling couplet: “Can’t breathe without cryin’/And I know you hear the sirens.”

But even as gunshot percussion rattles in the distance and queasy drones scrape at the upper register, the lyrics take an unexpected turn: “I just wanna dance and sweat,” chants Moor Mother, her voice processed into a choppy call-and-response chorus. “I just wanna dance and forget.” In another song, it might seem like a throwaway line, a placeholder for a deeper sentiment. But here, in the context of Haram’s blasted soundscaping and Moor Mother’s anguished rasp, the notion of disappearing into a dancefloor’s embrace is as serious as it gets.