Nihiloxica's Source of Denial Takes Aim at UK's Hostile Immigration Policies // New album on Crammed Discs

NIHILOXICA
Source of Denial
New album released 29th September 2023 on Crammed Discs

Check out the first track Kudistro here ~

https://nihiloxica.bandcamp.com/track/kudistro

Nihiloxica are the best band on Earth right now - The Quietus
The new electronic African revolution - Noisey
Trippy Afro-electro drum battle... dangerously hypnotic - MOJO
One of electronic music’s most original and exciting acts - XLR8R
Digital synths fizzing and  rumbling around hypnotic, polyrhythmic grooves - Pitchfork

NIHILOXICA’S SECOND ALBUM ‘SOURCE OF DENIAL’ TAKES AIM AT UK’S HOSTILE VISA POLICY

Source of Denial is the second LP from Nihiloxica, the Bugandan techno outfit hailing from Kampala, Uganda. It comes after more than three long years since ‘Kaloli’, their acclaimed debut on Crammed Discs. The album points a (middle) finger at the hostile immigration and freedom of movement policies implemented in the UK, as well as across the world. Fueled by their frustrations with this intentionally convoluted system, the group have produced their most cataclysmic effort to date. Returning to the Nyege Nyege studio in Kampala where the band recorded their early EPs, the band tracked ‘Source of Denial’ over an intense month of sessions in early 2022.

 The cover art is emblazoned with an ultra-metallic new logo,echoing the growing presence of metal influences across the tracklisting, while the hi-vis, official-document styling wrylyevokes the bureaucratic nightmare at the heart of the project.

 Tracks like ‘Asidi’ and ‘Baganga’ flirt  with the dystopian, mechanical patterns and tonalities of djent godfathers Meshuggah, while the gargantuan synth line of the title tracksummons the spirit of an 8-string guitar, synthesised palm-mutes and all. This is all effortlessly compounded with themolotov cocktail of Bugandan ngoma (drums) and club sounds the group have become revered for. On tracks like ‘Olutobazzi’, ‘Postloya’ and ‘Trip Chug’, the drums themselves are reanimated and manipulated more than ever before, further blurring the line between tradition and techno.

The only spoken words we hear throughout the album, outside of studio outtake ‘Preloya’, are computer generated. They speak of application processes, character backgrounds, and accountability, blasted through crackled phone speakers. The effect is a Kafkaesque feedback loop; an avalanche of constant call tones, uncanny British accents and rigorous interrogative questioning. The frustrations are a problem the band, a defiantly global outfit, has faced continuously. A whole UK tour was cancelled in 2022, and recently, a UK show had to be performed with only three members due to problems with a certain conglomerate visa agency who “provide services” for the UK, as well as a growing number of countries.

“We wanted to create the sense of being in the endless, bureaucratic hell-hole of attempting to travel to a foreign country that deems itself superior to where you’re from. We’re focussing on the UK as that’s where we’ve had the most trouble, but the problem goes much, much further. In this system if you have a certain passport or have even visited a certain country then you’re an appropriate subject to be interrogated and insulted time and time again just to prove that you’re worthy to enter, and normally this involves proving you have a
good enough reason to want to leave again! The arrogance of it is unbearable. This album was a way to express our disdain towards it...

What exactly is the source of your denial? Your passport? Your bank balance? Your skin colour? You’ve paid huge sums of money to be thrown from one profit-driven “service centre” to another, each denying responsibility, each limiting your right to freedom of movement as a human being. Despite some other serious humanitarian shortcomings, Uganda accepts some of the highest numbers of refugees in the world. Meanwhile the UK is trying to send them away to Rwanda. That says it all.” - Nihiloxica

UK TOUR DATES
22/07 - Intermission Festival - Birmingham, UK
23/07 - Blue Dot Festival - Manchester, UK
30/07 -Womad Festival - Wiltshire, UK
12/10 - The Rum Shack - Glasgow, UK
13/10 - The Voodoo Rooms - Edinburgh, UK
14/10 - Cobalt Studios - Newcastle, UK

19/10 - Strange Brew - Bristol, UK
20/10 - Jazz Cafe - London, UK
21/10 - The White Hotel - Manchester, UK