xin’s ‘Sucker’ searches beyond the status quo by unsettling convention in EP To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth

, 17 May 2018
sound

xin’s To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth EP is being released via Berlin’s Subtext Recordings on May 25, with a preview of ‘Sucker’ premiering on AQNB today. The Berlin-based producer explores the “spaces between conventions, cultures, pressures and sounds” by releasing the record through a series of independent platforms, rather than the key corporate players we all know.

The music too, is equally evasive and indefinable, where opener ‘Black Light, Blind Fire’ runs on six minutes of skittering glitches, echoing a clicks and cuts aesthetic being pounded by the more familiar and contemporary hi-tech noise elements of bass and syncopated, arrhythmic beats. ‘Sucker’ floats on a long, fragile audio wave before being chopped through by breathlessly splintered samples and drum settings, while never quite reaching a consistent dance hook. It’s a sound that unsettles and searches but never quite resolves.**   

xin’s To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth is out via Subtext Recordings on May 25, 2018.