5. NihiloxicaNihiloxica
I went to see Aphex Twin recently and they played first but I didn’t know so I missed them. But that’s another story because, of course that show sold out in ten minutes, but we had a friend who was DJing afterwards so she called last minute with two tickets. We got there just in time to see Aphex but I missed Nihiloxica, which sucks as I’ve been following those guys since I was in Uganda because I’m really good friends with the Nyege Nyege guys.
I was in Uganda for a week-and-a-half with In Place Of War. We converted this library on top of a museum into a studio and did these workshops teaching kids how to produce music. At the end they could keep the equipment and start producing stuff by themselves. It was amazing. We had seven or eight students with us for the whole time and at the end they were killing it. I brought some drum machines with me and some of them were, by instinct, doing incredible stuff. I was like ‘this gear needs to stay here, when I get back I can buy a new one.’ There was this super tough guy, and he came up at the end of the day and said ‘Look man, I appreciate the fact that you’re here. I know you have family but you being here with me, that means a lot’. For me and Laima, when you have this guy who is tough as nails, been through war, and being very open, that was amazing. And every day we were going through this kind of stuff.
I met the Nyege Nyege guys there, they do this record label which is more like tapes, because they can’t press vinyl in East Africa. They don’t have a pressing plant and I was like ‘man, this is so cool’. Nihiloxica, I believe, is five or six percussionists and one guy doing some synths. That’s the future, man.
