Backxwash/Tough Age
Backxwash
STIGMATA EP // Grimalkin
Hyperpop is a polymorphous sound which began to take form at the turn of the decade. Often associated with PC music and with independent productions, hyperpop has been a sound vastly inclusive and spearheaded by LGBTQ+ folks with names like Dorian Electra, p4rkr, Laura Les (100 gecs and osno1), SOPHIE, and the like making the rounds. And in conversation with the experimental and hip-hop corner from this wave of music, we see another release by the Montreal-based Zambian rapper, producer, and vocalist Backxwash. Released on August 4th , 2020, the STIGMATA EP is another transcendent step in the occult sound that Ashanti Mutinta cultivates as Backxwash.
The STIGMATA EP was produced by Backxwash and Will Owen Bennett, and it offers more of Backwash’s spiritual and haunting sound. The record includes features such as the flutist Alekto, the industrial hip-hop trio Camp Blood, as well as Ada Rook and Devi McCallion from the recently disbanded Toronto-based hyperpop project Black Dresses. The titular “STIGMATA” was released prior to the rest of the EP, and it served as an introduction to where Mutinta would look towards to follow up on her prior full-length release from this year. Accordingly, “STIGMATA” is the first track of the EP, and it kicks off the release with an elevated, spiritual candor of an ecclesiastic chant and the central hook wrapping the song together with the strength of Mutinta’s vocal delivery. Backxwash’s production in the track helps emphasize the resonance of her lyrics, Ada Rook’s metallic guitars, as well as Alekto’s orchestral flute to a combination between melodic death metal and hip-hop. By contrast, “DEMONS” decides to change things up and channels its energy down to a more creeping approach. This second track of the EP achieves its macabre tone in collaboration with Ada Rook’s ghastly guitar as the central loop of the song and Devi McCallion’s desolate vocal lines. These aspects of the song’s ambience are brought together in the production, where Backxwash reaches an instrumental track cleared for rhythmic, dooming vocals. The lyrical conversation set up between Mutinta and McCallion give the song a dynamic flow that makes it stand its ground after the energetic performance in the last track. “PSALMS 23” picks the energy up again as the last non-instrumental track of the release. From shout outs and letting the beat groove, we are brought to a fine collaboration between Backxwash and Camp Blood who meet at a common industrial edge. And with a strong thematic cohesion drawn from the Psalms 23, the song contends with the question of being marked by the grace of divinity and whether they are sheep cared for by the biblical shepherd. And lastly, “Joni Void – INTERLUDE OF DOOM” finishes up the EP with a free-form experimental drone ending. As the shortest and final track in the EP, “Joni Void” acts as a debriefing moment to sit in the cryptid ambient that Mutinta is carving out in a manner akin to an endarkened, electronic Gregorian chant. It is certainly a welcomed changed in how stripped down the interlude is, though I imagine it will be the hardest track to sell an audience to (not that it matters to Backxwash, as I will address). All of the lyrical work in the STIGMATA EP bring themes back to the question of claiming a heretical form of the spiritual from a Black and trans point of view, which are pre-emptively closed off from the heavenly gates.
With this in mind, Backxwash took to Twitter to remind us of something crucial to the origin of hyperpop’s inclusive sound and to comment on the favoring of whiteness in music scenes like Montreal’s rap scene: “Hyperpop is inclusive to LGBTQ but we gotta have these conversations of black people being left out of scenes they inspired. The machine works well if they can find something and repackage it for white folks. We have to start being honest about if we really want to be inclusive. Being from Montreal, Hip hop scene is mostly white dudes that rap in French. Weird seeing black people being left out of a genre they helped create and influenced but it has happened so many times in the past and we have to start being honest. Posting a black square not enough.” With the collaborative spirit of her work, we can say that part of what gets at the raw creativity of Backxwash is an understanding that the cis and white audience are not dependable when it comes to prioritizing Black and trans voices. I am very well aware of this fact in my experiences as latinx trans woman in music, as it is unavoidable to find some permeability between the work going into the music and the work going to the community around it. It is undeniable that the extent of Backxwash’s work is not limited to her music, for it extends over to the systematic struggles that Black trans people contend with in having a claim to divinity and let alone the bareness of Black trans lives mattering. For this reason, Backxwash’s is uncompromising in principle in her music and beyond it.
- Simone A. Medina Polo
Tough Age
Which Way Am I? // Mint Records
Hello my name is Green Noreen and I have and addiction.....my addiction is to music.
At least this addiction never made me self destruct. This addiction helped me cope with things. This addiction helped me release all things that needed releasing. I don’t see that as a bad thing do you?
I’m addicted to the new album by Tough Age titled Which Way Am I? These Toronto rockers got a flavour I want to savour. 80’s Indie Punk, that of X or B-52’s. Their fourth studio album brings a krautrock style that keeps kicking it! Whatever you wanna call it... it’s embracing old sounds and making it new and giving it its own flavour. The title of the album alone leaves one to question... Which Way Am I?
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.
Don’t judge a band by it’s name.
Just stop judging and let it be.
“Penny Current Suppression Ring” screams lets go for a rip! Skate, bike, roller skates, scooter or quad? As long as you can feel the wind in your hair and go fast. The words ...you can’t be like anyone... questions we’ve all asked ourselves at one time or another in our lives. To my 15 year old...
Your fine the way you are. You don’t have to be like anyone.
She’s finding her own way, her own style and sometimes I don’t even understand it but it doesn’t make me love her any less. Somethings sure came full circle there.... Wow!
”My Life’s a Joke and I’m Throwing it all Away” came with a fun animated video for you to check out. If you can’t laugh at yourself a little bit, what fun is life? Everything is open to be perceived many ways just as beauty is to the eye of the beholder. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean you should knock it.
I haven’t heard any good flute since Mama’s and the Papa’s and Jethro Tull...okay that’s not true. Flute is alive and well... Beastie Boys gave us Flute Loop to groove to and even Lizzo plays a mean-ass flute but I have to give credit to Tough Age for the fantastic and fabulous flute that tickled my fancy in the track “Possession”. I dig the gradual progressions in this one. Paired nice with Critical Mass. I really enjoyed it!
Let Tough Age blow your mind with their new album Which Way Am I? Go for a rip, have a sip or puff. Whatever floats your boat but make sure to add this to your summer soundtrack!!
Love Always,
Green Noreen
