Nihiloxica, the dark electro-percussion group formed between Kampala’s Nyege Nyege Festival and the Nilotika Cultural Ensemble, has recorded a new live set from a performance at Womad Festival.
In 2016, English producers Peter Jones (a.k.a pq) and Jacob Maskell-Key (a.k.a Spooky-J) travelled to Kampala to write, rehearse, and record a set of live recordings with the Ensemble. They spent a month locked away, working on a self-titled debut EP that came out through the Nyege Nyege Tapes label. They released Kaloli, their debut album, in 2020, and they’ve followed it recently with Source Of Denial, also on Crammed Discs, which points a middle finger at the hostile immigration and freedom of movement policies implemented in the UK. You can read more about the group here.
This set is filled with recordings from the latest album, recorded on the fly—it’s 25 minutes of pure dance energy, driven by rolling percussion and tense electronics.
“It’s a selection of our latest material live from Womad Festival 2023,” the group says. “We weren’t allowed an encore but the crowd wouldn’t leave until we came back on so we played ‘Kudistro’ until the stage manager eventually pulled the plug! We’re generally not keen on one hour-long live, audio-only recordings, which can’t correctly translate the experience of attending a Nihiloxica show. The 25 min edit works better in that respect.”
XLR8R Subscribers can download the recording below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.
Photo: Marco Maezza