Drexciya
Entry updated 24 August 2020. Tagged: Music.
US dance-music band founded by James Stinson (1969-2002). Drexciya's music is precise, intricate and often beautifully spare, unusually in a sub-genre generally characterized by over-frantic emphasis and rapid tempos. The band's releases were all supported by a distinctive "Black Atlantic" science-fictional narrative – critic Kodwo Eshun [see links below] calls it "electronic music's most ambitious sonic fiction since Parliament's 1975-79 Mothership Connection cycle." "Drexciya" itself is a submarine realm, not unlike Atlantis, populated by the children of Black slaves thrown overboard during the Atlantic passage who never lost the ability to breathe underwater they possessed in their murdered mothers' wombs. The group's albums, The Quest (1997), Neptune's Lair (1999) and Harnessed the Storm (2002), together with various single and EP releases – amongst them Deep Sea Dweller (1992), Drexciya 2: Bubble Metropolis (1993), Drexciya 3: Molecular Enhancement (1994), Drexciya 4: The Unknown Aquazone (1994) and The Return of Drexciya (1996) – are all located in this place, and several develop specific stories. Stinson's early death, of heart disease, brought the band to a premature end. [AR]
links
- Kodwo Eshun. "Drexciya: Fear of a Wet Planet" (January 1998 The Wire)
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