OneTaste presents beat boxer MC Xander's album launch party, with support from Bunty & DJ Bobby Gandalf.

Around sometime in the mid- to late-nineties train companies began automating their public announcements. No longer do you get the chirpy chappy lavishly furnishing your journey with proclamations of future destinations, reminiscent of an aged Alan Partridge or Brian Potter. Nor do you hear the melancholic “what’s-the-point” guy perspicuously aware that his knowing the stations by heart is due to +30 years of failed ambitions. Nope, what you have rather is a technocronic (usually feminine) voice speaking in unnervingly staccato rhythm adding oddly placed inflections which make ‘Bognor Regis’ seem like a question. (Perhaps it is?)

 It is particularly dismal then, when the automated voice has a self-reflective moment, breaks down, hands over duty to the fresh faced conductor, who continues to read out the train schedule as if he or she was in fact a computer largely incapable of imitating a human conductor – such is the way. It’s a fact: no longer do we simply mould machines in our own image but we also imitate imitations of ourselves. . .  

MC Xander impersonates machines. But not because they’re broken or because he has to, no; as Squarepusher once said: if you want to praise my music then praise my machines also. Likewise, if you want to appreciate Xander’s project then imagine some slick, well formulated and harmonically interesting software-engineered tunes, then remove the software. As Xander himself puts it, the result is (organic) ‘Progressive Dancehall’: a mixture of heavy basslines, high-topped melodies strung from some acrobatic vocal chords, reggae rhythms, punching drums and lyrics which, like all good songs, question rather than coffer self-profundities. escort - kl

Unlike many beatboxers, Xander creates a show both on-stage and on-record; his creative use of loop sampler and chaos-pad gives his tracks an edge and intricacy which won’t be found elsewhere. His new album ‘eyeopeness’ is released on Wednesday 28^th Feb, the launch party taking place at Vibe Bar, Brick Lane on the same day, tickets £6 – it’s going to be a cracker.