XYWHY, hip-jazz syndrome
They are not physicists or doctors. Just as well, their name could be a medical or pharmaceutical study title, used all the more so by the incredible people who love exhausting their eyes under a microscope. Karyotype : the photography and all of the chromosomes which characterize an individual, the sex and the race. To sterilise this word, the Parisian group XYWHY is more than a concatenation of microscopic sticks which designate from the top of their smallness, the nature of what is between the legs. But that is not the subject. XYWHY stretches the genetics in a contemporary and generational context. “People with the karyotype XYY (Klinefelter syndrome) were poorly understood in the 70s and were judged to be a community of genetically violent people. The same people who influenced that research and then finally found that there was not a behavioural anomaly to point out. In broad terms : When you had the style “XYWHY “, you were capable of the extreme! ” »
Extreme. The word is perhaps poorly chosen, or certainly too hard to talk about their music. It is voluntarily enforced, put at a reverse angle in its beautiful and elegant nature. It was born illegitimately, something that Coltrane would have perhaps termed as “fanciful”. Yet, beyond the obvious and the ongoing movement which advocates the original stance of ‘never done’ to the detriment of a confidence distorted by the comfort media, we now understand it as ‘capable of the extreme “. They are young, they want to take risks. They mix opposites like we would mix sugar and salt, they play with supra in da mood and ask for what they want, when they want on the markets of the parisian frenzy. Jealousy is a given, this cynicism hidden at the bottom of a real pleasure to hear more.
Two genres; jazz and hip-hop. On one side there are four friends that have reunited everything between jazzy love and prolific studies: Olivier on the trumpet, Fabien the bassist, Luc the drummer and Nils who has fun tweaking his pads: “I spent my childhood making instruments for buddies who payed back. When I arrived in Paris, I tried to develop this towards a ‘live’ project to link the dynamics of ‘sampling’ hip-hop with an instrumental dynamic to move away from the frame of the classic rapper who puts his flow on the beats. Because at the core, it is a live project that learns towards improvisation.” By following this idea, he came across Zack (alias Theorhetoric), an American rapper that has been living in France for 7 years, ” and who follows in the wake an important date: the first part of Soweto Kinch (rapper and musician of British jazz,.) in Tamanoir in Gennevilliers. It took us 2 and a half weeks to prepare for the first part with our instruments and Zack’s texts, etc. After winter and the set preparations, we then launched ourselves into the development of the EP with the means available”.
Self produced and fiddled with in a home studio and inspired by a common taste in electro (The Roots, Flying Lotus), XYWHY’s EP is a pacifist clash between two cultures which are not so far apart. Need to hear it to believe it? White Flag in Bern, from now we will savour the victory of listeners and the poor puppets who have still been enjoying their time as happy recipients.
to follow XYWHY news: Bandcamp – Facebook – Grooveshark