Artist: Plethor X

Title: What U Mean

Year Of Release: 2024

Label: OOH-sounds – OOH039DD

Genre: Ambient, Experimental, Dub, Techno, Footwork

Quality: 16bit-44,1kHz FLAC

Total Time: 38:10

Total Size: 217 mb





Tracklist

1. Bet (feat Muna Mussie) (05:33)

2. Negro (03:48)

3. What U Mean (03:12)

4. Fendika (feat STILL) (03:43)

5. Kifu (05:06)

6. Bet (feat Muna Mussie - Losssy remix) (05:16)

7. Bet (feat Muna Mussie - Nobile remix) (03:22)

8. Bet (feat Muna Mussie - Welker remix) (03:36)

9. Bet (feat Muna Mussie - Glass remix) (04:34)





Multidisciplinary artist Jermay Michael Gabriel and producer Giovanni Isgrò team up as Plethor X to present a debut EP of anti-colonial resistance, an unfolding experiment in self-determination.



Colonial trauma has no linear trajectory, and neither does memory. It seeps and sinks into the fibres without a temporal pattern, crossing generations, back and forth between past, present and future. Plethor X channel the multifaceted dimensions of such phenomena, exorcising trauma through sound, embracing cultural legacies and collective memories as a form of healing.



The driving force behind the record is the Habesha musical tradition, distinctive of Jermay's childhood - samples of the masinko, an Ethiopian and Eritrean one-stringed instrument, are used extensively - transposed into rhythmic structures onto which Isgrò playfully grafts elements of footwork, ghetto house, as well as gqom and singeli—a space-time gateway of complicity and experimentation.



Plethor X’s soundscapes are Afro-futurist ecosystems of explicit messages—'Don't use the N word’ is distinctly heard in ‘Negro’—coalesced with frenzied percussive textures built through destruction. With ‘Bet’ we experience Muna Mussie's hypnotic recitation of Tigrinya words drawn from a set of nursery rhymes and words emblematic of Eritrean culture. The voice of Mussie, who shares the same origins as Jermay, serves here as a vehicle to express a certain identity melancholia, the repetitive mode sounding like a soothing process of reconciliation. PAN-affiliated producer STILL makes his own contribution by reworking Plethor X’s material in 'Fendika', raising the rhythmic tension with his signature colourful, plugged-in dancehall style.



That with Europe is a bridge to an indefensible continent, with a predatory, plundering nature, sold as 'civilisation'. In ‘What You Mean’, Isgrò and Jermay conspire against their own Eurocentrism, regurgitating it from within.



The package is complemented by remixes from OOH-sounds affiliated artists nobile, Losssy (formerly unperson), Glass and WEȽ∝KER. Their brilliant versions of 'Bet' are a further investigation of the evocative potential of Mussie's voice and expression of the collective nature of this project.