Faizal Mostrixx, Mutations, Germany, Glitterbeat, GBLP 141 vinyl LP (2023)
Faizal Mostrixx is a man on a mission: bringing together his Ugandan heritage and other elements of traditional East African music and dance, and modern music technologies and cultural trends from outside the African continent, to form potential new cultures and ways of imagining future worlds where all humans, especially Africans, can thrive. Currently based in Kampala, Mostrixx began his artistic career as a dancer, embracing breakdance, traditional African forms and more contemporary experimentation, before moving into choreographic work and then making and producing his own music for dancing. “Mutations” is his first full-length album of his hybrid futurist African / electronic music for Glitterbeat after an EP “Transitions” he recorded for the same label in 2022. As the titles of his Glitterbeat releases suggest, Mostrixx’s music represent African culture, art and music as continuously changing, evolving, transforming, becoming, as such change is the best way of keeping African traditions and knowledge fresh and relevant for future African generations.
Though the music on “Mutations” is intended for the dancefloor and the community that dancing encourages, it also works well as an individual listening experience, with the sensations, moods and changes in consciousness that listening can bring. The lively singing, crisp and often raw rhythms, and the insistent beats work well complementing and contrasting with the cool spacious sounds and atmospheres of the electronic music featured. This is apparent right from the start with tracks like “Onions and Love” and “Loosely”, the latter featuring Lesotho singer / rapper Morena Leraba in imperious and urgent commanding form. After these two tracks, the music becomes a tug-of-war between the past and the future, as field recordings, beats and rhythms upfront in the mix battle for supremacy with synths and other electronic instruments on “Back to Tanzania” and “Passing Through”. True fusion of the past and future is achieved on “SandMan”, the bounciest and most fun track smack bang in the middle of the album, and from here on (in the album’s last four tracks) the music is completely or almost completely electronic.
Of the last half of the album, the most interesting and engaging piece is “Muzukulu”, being less frantic and (frankly) less generic and Eurocentric than the others with equal attention given to light dancefloor-friendly tunes and melodies as to the electronic beats and an electro-urban atmosphere. The field recordings of traditional chants and songs, either made by Mostrixx himself or taken from the International Library of African Music, on these tracks from the title track to the closer “Afro Aliens” can sound somehow one-dimensional, machine-like, and even kitschy against a background of incessant repeating rhythm loops no matter how initially energetic and vibrant these are. The closing track especially gives a hint that future Afrocentric societies might end up just as alienated and fragmented as current techno-fetishistic Western societies are, even under a veneer of electro-Afrocentric communalism and unity. That impression may not necessarily have been what Mostrixx intended here but it is certainly food for future thought on any future recordings he pursues in limning his African futurism vision.