The driving force behind the record is the Habesha musical tradition, distinctive of Jermay’s childhood – samples of the masinko, an Ethiopian and Eritrean one-stringed instrument, are used extensively – transposed into rhythmic structures onto which Isgrò playfully grafts elements of footwork, ghetto house, as well as gqom and singeli—a space-time gateway of complicity and experimentation.
Plethor X’s soundscapes are Afro-futurist ecosystems of explicit messages—’Don’t use the N word’ is distinctly heard in ‘Negro’—coalesced with frenzied percussive textures built through destruction. With ‘Bet’ we experience Muna Mussie’s hypnotic recitation of Tigrinya words drawn from a set of nursery rhymes and words emblematic of Eritrean culture. The voice of Mussie, who shares the same origins as Jermay, serves here as a vehicle to express a certain identity melancholia, the repetitive mode sounding like a soothing process of reconciliation. PAN-affiliated producer STILL makes his own contribution by reworking Plethor X’s material in ‚Fendika‘, raising the rhythmic tension with his signature colourful, plugged-in dancehall style.
That with Europe is a bridge to an indefensible continent, with a predatory, plundering nature, sold as ‚civilisation‘. In ‘What You Mean’, Isgrò and Jermay conspire against their own Eurocentrism, regurgitating it from within.
The package is complemented by remixes from OOH-sounds affiliated artists nobile, Losssy (formerly unperson), Glass and WEȽ∝KER. Their brilliant versions of ‚Bet‘ are a further investigation of the evocative potential of Mussie’s voice and expression of the collective nature of this project.
Here is the link to the album: Bandcamp
Plethor X is an artistic and musical duo consisting of sound designer Giovanni Isgrò and multidisciplinary artist Jermay Michael Gabriel, both based in Milan. The collaboration spans a plurality of artistic practices, and debut with ‘What You Mean’, their first album. Plethor X was born as a form of complicity rather than an alliance. A possibility to imagine, through music, anti-hegemonic horizons in constant dialogue. There is no liberation in visibility or representation, unless one wishes to be tokenized or fetishised. www.instagram.com/plethor_x
Muna Mussie is a multidisciplinary artist based in Bologna. Her work moves between gesture, vision and word, crossed by the practice of embroidery, and investigates the languages of the arts to give shape to the tension that arises between different expressive poles, private and public, memory and oblivion, visible and invisible. www.munamussie.com
STILL (aka Simone Trabucchi)’s practice is defined by a uniquely nomadic approach, shapeshifting through vernacular worlds of sound and imagery. Previously known as Dracula Lewis, the Milan-based artist and musician follows the unearthing of an overlooked colonial past linking his Italian hometown of Vernasca to Ethiopia and Jamaica. www.instagram.com/stillagramstill
