Each track is a vigorously constructed matrix of beats, flexible but muscled and oiled up, arranged in a lattice of suggestion and ideas.
[Release page] Xambuca identifies itself as an “ongoing multimedia collective which has had help from several trusted authorities,” which it then proceeds to name, and many an impressive and unexpected name pops up, but it is in fact Chandra Shukla, the first name on that list, who is Xambuca. He eschews being described as “experimental” because most everything has already been experimented with; but then again, all the great scientists insist that they are merely standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before them. Furthermore, Shukla claims the name “Xambuca” is a random collection of letters that only by some amazing coincidence happened to fall in an order similar to the name for an Italian liqueur; it, like the proverbial “x” in math, signifies the unknown with which we must factor to come to any kind of conclusion.
Which means that Xambuca’s audio output—the visual element is just as important to his live performances, but we turn our attention to home listening here—will vary wildly and the results, logically, not even necessarily to his satisfaction. Joulupukki is a series of vignettes inspired by and dedicated to the Saami people living at the top of Fenno-Scandinavian peninsula. The only truly indigenous people of Western Europe many of whom still live the same, rhythmically seasonal nomadic lifestyle herding reindeer as their forefathers have for generations, they have a rich artistic tradition and spiritual legacy. Their land is filled with spirits and holy geography and Xambuca’s extramundane electronica reflects this strangeness. Even for rhythmic electronic music, it fits no neat category. Each track is a vigorously constructed matrix of beats, flexible but muscled and oiled up, arranged in a lattice of suggestion and ideas. In the spaces between the bell-ringing of the ten-minute “‘Boazu” (reindeer), a world is bridged between modern composition, Balinese gamelan and the balletic sight of the antlered beasts trotting round and round in a brown-white blur when corralled and orchestrated by their herders.
Joulupukki also makes a connection between the most elemental Scandinavian animal husbandry and the latest in German digital technology. There is virtually no distortion in his eighty-five minutes of gleaming machine music, just clarity, crisp and uncluttered as Arctic air. Although there are echoes of traditional Saami instruments, like the shallow, tensile drum beats of “Lipeäkala” and “Ivneheapmi,” and evocations of the biting, horizontal wind sweeping loose snow across the alpine grazing lands, the pure, rigid synthetic-ness of his metallic sound sculptures has a strange affinity with the acres of pristine, white snow which moulds the land of Sàpmi into different shapes each long winter.
Joulupukki is available on Erototox Decodings. [Release page]
