[channel], the new album from XXU & UXX, finds the duo come together with the chirality of a mirror image, both identical and opposite. LeeAnn Perry (XXU) employs her fine-tuned dark-ambient sensibilities to render grim, cinematic sonic landscapes. Amy Braun (UXX) inhabits her vulnerable and distinctive lyrical vibrato, diffused in a lace of interwoven harmony.
“Touch”, the album’s single, brings the listener through a broken gate, stumbling in on discordant kick drums. In the distance we hear an incoming oscillator, and we are immediately addressed with the stark truth: “to feel my love/can be serious as a heart attack”.
[channel], the record, has a lot of truths–and lies and death and rebirth. One-about-to-be-born loses its memory of a faraway former home. One-recently-dead finds themself clinging to lost love, resisting the inevitable pull to the other side. One victim of violence takes a celestial view of their betrayal, arriving at forgiveness. One prisoner discovers a key in their own pocket. One hopeless entanglement is sliced through by the grace of annihilating emptiness. With the help of Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum, Hammers of Misfortune and Cardinal Wyrm) on trumpet punctuating the project’s glimmering, ethereal lament on track “Cold”, the group brings us seven tracks which culminate in presence and reflection, darkness and light.
XXU & UXX occupy a distinctive musical niche: gothic in sensibility, textural enough to appeal to fans of ambient music and lyrical enough to live in your psyche. Katabatik is thrilled to collaborate with the group on this 2024 release.
[channel] from XXU & UXX will be available September 13, 2024 via www.katabatik.org