Nihiloxica’s first recordings brought musicians from Uganda’s Nilotika Cultural Ensemble together with electronic musicians Peter Jones and Jacob Maskell-Key. Their 2017 EP was recorded live at Boutiq Studios in Kampala, with each piece captured in a single take. Traditional drums, shakers and long drums sit beside synthesizers and a conventional drum kit.
The single-take detail matters.
Electronic music can be edited almost without limit. Timing can be corrected, sections moved and individual hits replaced.
Recording an ensemble live removes much of that safety net.
The musicians have to build the architecture collectively while the tape is already running.
Nihiloxica later described their work in terms of Bugandan techno, but the interesting part for me is not whether acoustic percussion can sound like techno.
It is that techno’s intensity can emerge without reducing all rhythm to a programmed grid.
Several musicians can create repetition together while every cycle remains slightly different.
A groove does not need mathematical perfection to become hypnotic.
Sometimes the instability is what gives it force.
