@xcrswx & Lolina – Fixes/FM (Feedback Moves, 2023)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

I find it hard, even impossible; to categorize this split 10’’ in any genre or style that has the word jazz in it and, at the same time, jazz seems like the beginning for the music you will listen to on both sides of this vinyl record. Believe me if you want, this is exactly the beauty of the second release by this new label, Feedback Moves.

The terms reconceptualising and undermining are not unknown for this duo by London based musicians, saxophonist Seymour Wright and percussionist Crystabel Riley. On different formations and line-ups they continue, with pathos and strong will, to explore the sonic possibilities of their respected instruments –and their minds. The first side of this 10’’ is the second recorded release by @xcrswx, the first being a 7”, and we listen to them trying hard to get away from the burden (or just the history of it) of jazz. Beginning, as we read on the bandcamp page, with the sounds of fireworks, they go on minimizing their virtuosity to presenting as many difficulties, as they can, for the listener to understand what goes on. Ok, you already know that there’s percussion and a saxophone involved, but their will to experiment poses more questions (is it electronic music? Can I dance to it? Could it be called noise or just noisy?) Than answers and a lot of promises for a more realized, and lengthier, future release.

Lolina, or Inga Copeland, or Alina Astrova (her real name) or former half of the exciting but now defunct duo of Hype Williams (now there’s some people who reinvented Black music), presents, on the second side, an abstract, experimental and electronic take on rhythm –be it more or less jazzy. There’s a lot of dub on the track and she, too, undermines the rhythmology of the track as the core of it. It is, most definitely, rhythmic, but it hates it as well. My description might be confusing, I know, but is also a way to wind down my enthusiasm for both tracks.

I should just write that this is modern music in its best, too avant-garde and so basically rhythmic at the same.

Listen and buy here:

@koultouranafigo