Vinyl LP / Digital
Written and produced by XEXA;
Mastered by Tó Pinheiro da Silva, Artwork by Márcio Matos + L&L;
Released September, 2025.
VINYL/DIGITAL: Order from us
A1 – Project 8
A2 – Txê
A3 – Kizomba 003
A4 – Kissom
A5 – Pulse Bounce
A6 – Transversive Line
B1 – Será
B2 – Oásis
B3 – Xtinti
B4 – Quem és tu
PRESS RELEASE
Xexa is still undefined, gliding over her origins, influences and points of reference. Her music is informed by uploads from all that, processing heritage and future in much the same democratic way, sure of its (her!) path. Synthetic as it may sound, “Kissom” contains the very human element of Xexa’s presence, not only through her instantly recognizable ethereal vocals but also manifest in the web of grooves stopping short of “dance”. “Kizomba 003” is the closest she comes to the dancefloor, a reduced take on the popular style of kizomba, a low-key interpretation but with the vocals atypically high in the mix. A brief breath of nostalgia. “Kissom” (title track) prolongs the slow pace, almost as an extended mix of “Kizomba 003”, stretching the sexy bounce for close to 4 extra delightful minutes.
Everything seems to dissolve into space, as if every track gently expires only to be reconfigured somewhere else, molecule by molecule, perhaps in a different location within our mind. The artist somehow corroborates the feeling, particularly regarding “Será”, “Xtinti” and “Txe”, which she says “finish exactly where i wanted. They all end with an EQ that mutes the frequencies until they cease to exist”. Here, there, sparse beats, successive waves of ambience, half machine lips singing close to our ears, a blend of classic 4AD and a metallic environment warmly wrapping around the music. Extra long, “Quem és tu?” poses the question – Who are we? Who is she? And the title “Kissom” stems from another question Xexa often hears from people, “Ki som é este?” (What is this music?). The answer might well be the the artist’s own paste of the words “kiss” and “som”. Lovely.
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XEXA’s debut album, Vibrações de Prata, was an anomaly for Príncipe. The Lisbon label made its name releasing batida, a percussive strain of dance music that rewires Angolan styles like kuduro and kizomba with jagged synths and samples. But you probably wouldn’t dance to Vibrações de Prata. Album closer “Clarinet Mood,” with its field recordings of squawking seagulls and splashing water, transports you to a haunted space—imagine Brighton pier shrouded in Silent Hill 2’s impenetrable fog. The track has more in common with the moody improv sets you’d expect from a midweek night at London’s artsy Cafe OTO than Lisbon’s raucous MusicBox. In fact, XEXA made “Clarinet Mood” in London as part of her course at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Despite growing up in Quinta do Mocho (the home of batida pioneers like DJ Marfox), XEXA has no particular allegiance to Lisbon. She is more interested in Afrofuturism, as she told Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and “visualising the future, where the future means development and independence.” Both Vibrações de Prata and Kissom are equally ambitious experiments in form, but XEXA’s debut now feels like a work in progress when compared to her latest record. Kissom binds together the far-flung ideas of its predecessor into a vibrant, fully imagined world.
Pitchfork, October 2025
Alum of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Xexa left a lasting impression with ‘Vibrações de Prata’ (2023), a quietly outstanding debut LP of lissom ambient forms not previously heard on Príncipe. That album can now be heard as a seed bed for ‘Kissom’, which nurtures her electroacoustic ambient-pop forms into properly unusual, expressive arrangements of oneiric vox and gently rugged yet gooey grooves cultivated and pruned from a palette of bittersweet synth tones that tickle and probe all the right places. However the most remarkable thing about it is surely when she resembles Arthur Russell or some 4AD mutation, like to the extent we’re pulling hair out trying to ID the sample, but it’s actually all Xexa’s original work: her own World of Echo or siren songs calling from the firmament somewhere above and between twin bases, Lisbon & London.
In possession of the sort of synaesthetic tones that get us salivating, and with the tekkerz to shape them into an absorbing storytelling style, Xexa has us rapt from the curdled, pastoral chamber toned air-stepping motion of ‘Project 8’ to a quietly jaw-dropping 12 minute excursion into OOBE-like choral melancholy on closer, ‘Quem és tu’. There are worlds within worlds inside, invoking Arthur’s anguished intonation on the blinder ‘Txê’ and again, but squashed into elegant squirm on ‘Kizomba 003’, and releasing the pressure with exquisite levity in ‘Kissom’ – a personal portmanteau of “kiss” and “som” (meaning “sound” in Portuguese) that riffs on name of the prevailing dance style. ‘Pulse Bounce’ meanwhile pulls closest to the dance, but not quite, as does the ricocheting snares that scud the high registers with her wonderfully free vocals on ‘Será’, whereas ‘Transversive Line’ pulls into deepest blue states of mind, and ‘Xtinti’ reels off into psyched subconscious recursion. An absolute must-check and one of 2025’s outstanding works, no less.
Boomkat, September 2025
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