‘Shifgrethor & Konstant Kemmer’ / Mx-Ai [Interview/Review]
Blending musique concrete with elements of jungle & dub, Mx-Ai draws on sci-fi concepts of androgyny & identity for their compelling, experimental two-track debut, “Shifgrethor” / “Konstant Kemmer”.
These two tracks – named after concepts from Ursula Le Guin’s 1969 sci-fi classic The Left Hand of Darkness and released via creative co-operative and label Midheaven– mark the arrival of an exciting new artist, Eora based producer Mx-Ai. These songs provide a glimpse into their weird and wonderful sonic universe, drawing on dancehall, jungle, break-beat, dub and musique concrete to create a layered, constantly shifting soundscape full of tight grooves and warped tension that they describe as “What it may be like if The Neptunes and Coil made a track together…”
Despite Shifgrethor/Konstant Kemmer being Mx-Ai’s debut release, the producer has been making music under other guises for the last decade, moving from playing in bands to working on no-input mixing to chopping samples and programming drums. Years of habitual experimentation and consciously auto-didactive practice have led them to their current warped bass sound – blending structural grooves with raw samples and shimmering synths to create intricate, ever-shifting soundscapes largely inspired by dub and musique concrete.
“They [musique concrete and dub] are quite similar in process of taking sounds and then reprocessing them with different FX etc. to create something different…
Both were also significant in pushing what was possible in audio production in the 60’s and 70’s, and it still kind of blows my mind what people did at that time. Obviously this is oversimplifying what these musical forms are and the cultural significance that they have, but I think they’re quite foundational for me in the way of how I think about sound now.”
Dancehall also loomed large in these tracks, as Mx-Ai describes that “Konstant Kemmer” was originally just them trying to make something in a similar vein as Jamaican production duo Equiknoxx. “I hadn’t really heard dancehall like that before when their first album came out” they explain, “so I was very taken by the sparseness, the weight and cheekiness of it”.
Breaking down their process further, Mx-Ai discussed some of the different stages of experimentation that they go through when they’re building their tracks:
“As far as process goes, I’ll spend some time recording some samples off of records I’ve gotten, or old tracks I’ve made that never went anywhere, or just generic sample packs. Then I’ll spend a day or two working on the idea with the different synths and FX I own. Then once I think I’ve gotten the most out of what I can with the gear I’ll record everything separately into Pro tools.”
“Usually I’ll have a break from it for a bit, or realise that it’s too busy and needs to be whittled down. So I’ll often chop things up, change their tone, change melodies, send things out of the computer and re-record them in a different way. Often things will change quite a bit and I usually work quite slowly, but most of the original sounds end up in there somewhere, just in a very different context.”
“Also somewhere in all of this I usually get excited and send under-developed loops to my friends when I’m finishing late at night,” they add, “and they’ll give me guidance on how to get it to a point where it’s not complete trash.”
The resulting experiments are certainly not trash, where the sweeping FX and minute rhythmic shifts of “Konstant Kemmer” feel almost like wandering through a dark, labyrinthine spaceship, not quite knowing if you’re alone. Sparse electronic beeps and twinkling synths cling to tense, urgent beats before trailing off into deeper, slower sounds.
Behind it all, constant clicking and whirring sounds give the sense that whatever you’re walking through is constantly changing around you. They register as sticky, uneasy sounds, sitting imperceptibly between mechanic and organic.
By comparison, ‘Shifgrethor’ is less brooding, offering a pulsing, urgent groove in place of the creeping, spiralling sparseness of ‘Konstant Kemmer’. Though the strange mix of beeping, clicking and whirring is present here too. “I was trying to make something a bit more ‘functional’ in a way,” said Mx-Ai, “But I dunno if I really achieved that.”
Both tracks seem to evoke a similar liminal space, sitting somewhere between anxiety and excitement, making almost tangible the feeling of cautious exploration.
In light of the sci-fi influence behind the two tracks, the feeling of exploration and disorientation starts to assume a new haunted meaning. In Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, a diplomatic envoy called Ai Genly travels to the planet Gethen to convince their society to join an intergalactic coalition. Much of the novel is centred around the protagonist trying to understand Gethenian culture and their non-binary approach to sexuality and gender.
“For the alias of Mx-Ai it was almost like a covert way of including preferred pronouns into a sequence of letters that wouldn’t be necessarily explicit if people didn’t get it. The ambiguity of ‘Ai’ leans into that a bit too, where people are naturally going to assume its artificial intelligence over a person’s name. Plus it was kind of a way of imagining what effect Gethen may have had on Ai Genly, and if it changed the way he perceived his own gender.”
“The track titles were also two themes that stuck out from the book”, Mx-Ai explains, “they were points of miscommunication but also cultural crossover for the main characters. Each character couldn’t fully comprehend the other’s versions of these things because of the different contexts they’d been raised in. For me, these were quite poignant parts of the book, that exemplified the points of critique Le Guin was levelling at culture at the time.”
Keenly, in the novel ‘Kemmer’ represents a monthly period of sexual receptiveness and high fertility where the citizen of Geth adopt sexual attributes. During Kemmer, the Gethenian’s become sexually either male or female, with no strong predisposition towards either (although it can be affected by their relationships). On the other hand, Shifgrethor can be roughly described as a sense of personal pride, which other Gethenian’s are socially bound to respect.
“With Shifgrethor, it was specifically the way that Ai Genly perceived this that was most interesting to me, how because of his male-ness & human-ness, he interpreted people’s actions as having ulterior motives, being self-serving. With Kemmer, the funniest part of the book for me is when Estraven exclaims, "How do you get anything done if you're constantly in Kemmer!?’”
Artwork by Ben Buchanan
Within the context of The Left Hand of Darkness, Mx-Ai’s “Shifgrethor” and “Konstant Kemmer” assume a new exciting and challenging identity as a piece of queer art that asks the listener to reflect on their own journey of self-conception. The mixed feelings of exploration, excitement and anxiety the songs invoke seem suddenly less abstract, and more achingly familiar.
And the changing landscape evoked by those whirring, shifting sounds – that odd blend of organic and mechanical noise – starts to feel more reflective of the experience of moving through the world in the changing self, perceptions of identity and belonging constantly recalibrating to make sense of a world beyond the binary. The breaking grooves and subtle rhythmic shifts might hint at the promise of tantalising new horizons, but they still evoke the grinding, sticky reality of working through change.
Clearly this debut release from Mx-Ai is an alluring statement of intent from an intriguing new electronic artist, and a hint of more boundary-pushing soundscapes to come.
Stay up to date with Mx-Ai on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
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Article by Dylan Thomson-Barney.
Header image by Ivy Whittingham.
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