Nicola Fornasari // SUBSTANCE.IT // Xu(e) - Brown Jenkin

CD-R on Thirsty Leaves Music. | 100 copies limited edition, handmade & Hand Numbered.

Thirsty Leaves is back & happy to announce its 4th release, Brown Jenkin by Italian duo Xu(e): a 10-track hybrid of dark jazz, noise & ambient explorations. This is their 9th release in almost a decade.

radio, distortion, fuzz & ringmod pedals, line6 pod, korg monotron, double bass, drum programming

Recorded & written by Xu(e) between December '14 and January '15.

Mixed & mastered by Andrea Poli between February and March '15.

Artwork designed by Nicola Fornasari.

Handmade packaging designed by Pat Kiout Production.

"[...] Some electronic music tends to be too harsh or dense and unsettling. Not this music, it gets close to being ominous but never goes too far. At around 44 minutes, this disc didn’t seem long enough yet I was often mesmerized nonetheless. I had to listen very closely to hear the textures were surgically manipulated. Time to listen again and again. "
Bruce Lee Gallanter
Downtown Music Gallery (NY) - DMG/ARC label

"[...] The vitality of this new release resides in the unusual combination of collages, brooding instrumental sections (in a deliberately avant jazz style), meticulously articulated micro-tonal fragments, manipulated voices and various concrete noises. This EP almost generates a tripped out sonic impact on the listener’s mind. Those experimental acid-jazzy electronic paintings are beautifully strange and continuously intricate. Brown Jenkin offers a challenging sense of compositional avant-gardism in an original stylistic genre which melts electro-acoustic attempts with free-form instrumental abstracts."
Philippe Blache
on Igloomag

"[...] This album walks nicely a thin line between the super layered, super heavy drone/noise sound and all things more quiet and atmospheric. A bit of doom jazz is never far away. Xu(e) produced their music with quite some eye for sonic detail and it offers quite some variation in these pieces and that's what makes this album a most enjoyable one. Excellent album!"
Frans de Waard
on Vital Weekly

"Conjured drones, repetition and the stale air of ill deeds. [...] Just how particular beams of light can illuminate the dust that otherwise drifts unseen, Xu(e) seem to observe drones rather than generate them. [...] Internally, I raise the question of whether Brown Jenkin means me harm. For every beautiful wave of melody that causes me to cast such thoughts aside, there is a crooked or serrated edge that resurrects my concern once again."
Jack Chuter
on ATTN:Magazine

"Quella condensata nelle dieci tracce del lavoro è una ricerca che procede per antinomie: rumore e decompressione ambientale, destrutturazioni jazz e frequenze statiche si succedono in una dimensione atemporale. [...] Sequenza surreale e magmatica."
Raffaello Russo
on Rockerilla #422 October 2015

"Brown Jenkin creeps out of one’s speakers -or headphones if you’re really adventurous- like a malignant fog, within these banks of feedback and devious engineering you will hear more than enough to convince you that this band have been plotting to record these events. [...] Delicately, xu(e) move us through the different phases of what some would term madness with a lithe and commanding dexterity."
Peter Marks
on Santa Sangre