Syd Nukuluk - Data X Change (Slowfoot Records)

WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE:

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WHAT WE SAY:

UK hip hop/grime is now officially pop music which means more wiggle room in the nest for its mutant offspring to thrive & for the discerning nanny of the musical margins Slowfoot Records to nurture hip hop tripper, urban folk troubadour & sound artist Syd Nukuluk on this, his fine debut release.

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WHAT YOUR EARS SAY:

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WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY:

Data X Change is the debut release from Syd Nukuluk, a producer, songwriter and artist based in London. Written and recorded over the space of a year in a variety of locations and states of mind, it is a long awaited first release for the artist.

The EP explores what it is to be a songwriter in a digital, image based age - guitar is abstracted as a medium throughout the release, sometimes providing the dominant melody, sometimes just fragments and textures. Different genres are explored, the music lurching from trip-hop to ambient, folk to lo-fi, all tied together with a distinct sonic melancholia.

Field recordings and synthetic glitches feature prominently, setting the landscape for a dialogue between analogue and digital, and exploring where sentiment can exist in-between these two states. Nostalgia is created for digital spaces that never existed, lamentations for unrealised futures articulated in specific genres across the EP. The eclectic lurching from genre to genre alludes to a time of cultural over-stimulation, of multiple identities.

Data X Change prominently features the distinctive voice of French-British rapper Monika, an artist experimenting with an online, digital sense of his own blackness and masculinity. His fictions to promulgate online, with the desire to affirm, explore and transcend his own identity. A chance encounter with Syd in 2018 led to some studio sessions and they haven't look back from there, already hard at work at their next release.



We are in the midst of a soft pink apocalypse; of loosely defined shapes and pleasant sensations, general warm feeling and beautiful simulations of what was once comfort.

And everything is fuzzy…. Except not like how fuzzy actually feels, bristly and spiky, jagged yet pleasant to the touch.

Fuzzy. Distorted, lush, simultaneously dampened and sharpened. Fuzzy like all nuance has been erased, dynamics washed away. Everything vibrates the same, creating some kind of harmony, and with that harmony, something is lost. Something real, in its own context.

And this is one of those moments of indescribable happiness. This is surely the hum of contentment, of being a cog in the almighty whirr.

The announcer on the train platform imitates an American boxing announcers tone - think ‘Let’s Get Ready To Rumble.’ Some turn their heads, most march on. Nearly everybody smiles, at least to themselves. Smiling like we’ve heard it all before.

And we are in the midst of a soft pink apocalypse; the sky the same colour we always imagined the heavens. We feast on its light like one collective parasite, we capture it and scurry home. And at any one moment we are all the performer and all the crowd, observing ourselves from a tall, lonely glass platform, with that smile on our face. That smile on our face.

Credits
All tracks composed, produced and performed by Syd Nukuluk
except - 'Glassbox' composed by Syd Nukuluk/Monika/Wazoo and 'Plasticene' composed by Syd Nukuluk/Monika.

Syd Nukuluk - Vocals, Guitar, Synthesiser, Production
Monika - Vocals [1,3]
Wazoo - Drums and Keys [1]
Mateo Carlos - Bass [2]
Anthony Boatboy - Bass [3]
Patrick Fitzgerald - Bass [1]
Sienna Bordello - Vocal Samples [3]