When I first read a description of the Brighton-based producer and DJ Xylitol’s music that referred to its mixture of kosmische and jungle, I approached it with a good deal of scepticism. That’s not to say the two elements cannot, or should not, be mixed – of course there’s a wealth of creative potential in making beat-driven dance music that mines the origins of electronic sound. But when I hear of any DJ invoking that golden age of synth music, more often than not what comes to mind is the most antiseptic form of electronic music, one that uses arpeggiating, wavy synths with no sense of purpose other than mellowing out wooks as they come down from a bad trip – the rave equivalent of waiting room music, in other words. Xylitol’s newest album Blumenfantasie gave me a good lesson in the value of not rushing to judgment for once in my life.
What’s most impressive about Xylitol’s music is how gracefully she avoids falling into the trap that befalls many DJs working with these influences, that being that they engage with what the sound represents rather than its physical, tangible properties. On Blumenfantasie the sound is far more than just a signifier, and the kosmische elements are subtler and more substantive than any sweeping, blissed-out gestures. If anything, they call to mind the melancholic minimalism of Nigerien-Ghanaian synth pioneer Mamman Sani or the twinkling, introspective grooves of The Other People Place more than anything out of Berlin or Düsseldorf.
It helps that she never lets her music get too new-agey, moving with enough grit and vigour that one could never mistake Blumenfantasie for anything other than a killer jungle record. ‘Sudwestwind’, for instance, has both a truly hypnotic and meditative synth melody and one of the most guttural, skull-rattling beats I’ve heard in recent years, equal parts intricate and immediate. These disparate elements, rather than being used to create some sort of dramatic contrast, simply exist to strengthen one another. And they do.
Even if Xylitol were content to simply regurgitate the sounds of decades past, Blumenfantasie would still be worth a listen off the strength of Xylitol’s abilities, both in her sense of melodicism and her deftness at crafting a heavy fucking track. On the whirlwind title track, she seemingly throws out new textures and rhythms every few seconds, and every one of them lands. Even when the breaks are pared down a bit, like on the trip hop-esque ‘Mirjana’, the music is still bursting with energy and ecstatic spirit.
It would be all too easy to make a record of this sort that starts with some sort of artist statement and then builds the music from there, but that isn’t the case on Blumenfantasie. Above all else, it feels as though Xylitol is making the music that feels right to her. The feeling is contagious.
