Tutu - 2023: From the Black Hole to the Ground Floor

Tutu - From the Black Hole to the Ground Floor

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Guixine, pronounced gwisin, is a Korean folkloric ghost that haunts the living world out of spite. On the debut album by Guixine for Psychic Liberation, Woodland Fantasies, Guixine haunts through fifteen tracks of pressurized techno with deceptively complex minimalist gestures. Woodland Fantasies is rooted in a scene of narrative dichotomy for Guixine, wherein the forest exists as a “resting place for aspirations” while also the setting for an eroto-charged male getaway. Throbbing psychedelia pulsates through the album, soundtracking Guixine’s hedonistically inclined character, K. K embarks on layers of sexual viscerality in the tactile and relational, transcending the material sexual escapades of the group sex meet-ups in the forest environment towards a chemically vesseled psycho-spiritual realm. Negotiating K’s anti-climactic post sex purge with nymphs and forest characters, the emptying out of K elicits a portal of stripping away the inner burdens. K’s catharsis is only an entry point to their fevered experience, as K holds clutches a gay pornography magazine in the back of a van they enter  deeper and more difficult to ascertain “void”. We, the listeners, are left on a cliffhanger around K’s fate.
On Woodland Fantasies, Guixine gives you a long-form meditation on pointed rhythm efficacy through pressurized clicks and boiling bass curves. Composed entirely using the FM 8 VST, the longform release feels something like a peak Raster-Noton album, or Sigha’s “Purification Loops” through a Mika Vainio lens. Recorded during what the anonymously guarded Guixine recalls as their “worst depression of January 2022”, the album accentuates a winter isolationist sonic makeup, yet cleverly mixed for a louder and more sociable potential. Guixine’s anecdotal woodland fantasy sets a tone for a headier listener's evening nature stroll towards a night of unprecedented indulgences and potential. Full pressure and full volume applied, the walk towards the titillating unknown is enveloped by Guixine’s psycho-psychedelic-eroto journey.

Woodland Fantasies

PURCHASE

GUIXINE - Nobody can see us here (PLIB031)

With 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒄𝒕, exael’s offering to the ENXPL series, the artist furthers their exploration of what they refer to as “the jester’s gaze”, wherein a variable array of emotions of the fool are less than obvious to decode. In this emotively charged interzonal reflection point, exael probes these psychedelic anxieties through eight varying tracks of accomplished electronic music production. Excavating the root role of the jester and it’s cosmic objecthood, exael takes on a synchronous identity; human and computer, jester and virus, superimposed. Far from a glistening ambient escapism, or sentimental shoegaze meditations, or obligatory club tropes, exael has created a sonic terrain unique to their own narrative and positionality as an artist. Side A of 𝑽𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒄𝒕 showcases exael’s comfort in fast tempo constructions, while the B side offers slower tempoed ventures with guest vocal duties by writer Zoe Darsee moving between trip-hop and industrial affectations.

exael is an alias of Naemi, an artist residing in Berlin. Their work under this moniker aims to upend elements of divergent sonic aesthetics and musical styles, reassembling them with the intent to create diffuse, mulitfunctional contexts. Utilizing exael as an avatar, Naemi attempts to access a collective subconscious via their own, externally processing the sounds and images that permeate contemporary life. Thus, highlighting the ways in which people merge and re-combine with culture on a molecular level as a result of this near-constant immersion. They present stimulating, lysergic sounds in an organic and explorative manner instead of the sometimes exhausting vibe of highly-calculated, experimental club music. 
credits
releases August 27, 2023

All production exael
Audio finalized by Glyn Maier
Design by RJM Vanderheyden

VANISHING ACT

PURCHA$E

ENXPL18 - EXAEL - B1 Desire Is A Glitch (with Zoe Darsee)

The manifold artistic roles of Lisbon Portugal-based usof - producer, DJ, label-runner, visual artist - matches his multifaceted audio output. usof has been at the forefront of the accelerating expansion of "ambient" into an increasingly liminal space, twisting and morphing the genre origins of meditative and background music into unsettling, fantastically detailed compositions. ENXPL is proud to present 𝑾𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝑾𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑵𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒓, usof's latest album, which draws from 20th century composition, dub soundsystems, 1990s club/rave culture, cinematic sound design, post-cybernetic dreams, and the hauntological ache underlying much of 21st century discourse.

Between the exacting technicality and heady conceptual underpinnings of 𝑾𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝑾𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑵𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒓, usof also makes room for playfulness and humor. On 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘵, electronic gurgles and croaks converse above synth pads which would not be out of place on cassettes with titles like "Dolphin Magic" or "The Fairy Ring" that litter dusty corners of thrift stores. The dub bass theatrics on the title track are inflated to an absurd degree. These excursions from more formal and contemplative ambiances demonstrate usof's fully-realized world building skills. While 𝑾𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝑾𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝑵𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒓 may seem brief at approximately 30 minutes, its breadth and depth invite many listenings.

"listening to yourself between kid and future point ideas,
that evolution that obsessive always me

lmaooo looking back on the passing of time, family, friends,
when it was already sometimes good but somehow

when you, us, them, we, where, were, you when we bridged

feeling already like you might be making what I’m thinking" - Seán Being

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