Authenticity & Consistency, two key words that immediately come to mind when we’re talking about Loxy and Ink.
As music and creative culture at large hurtles towards an abyss of ‘likes’ as currency and vacuous validity, the job of musicians who stand for authenticity and consistency has become ever more important and it is at this juncture where Loxy and Ink become indispensable.
Two titans in UK breakbeat culture, Loxy & Ink were both present at the inception at the birth of UK dance music culture and continue to be torchbearers. One glance at the CV of both artists will show you everything you need to know. They were both residents & recording artists at three incredibly important clubs & record labels: Metalheadz at Blue Note, Speed at Mars Bar and Renegade Hardware at The End. These three clubs and associated labels are important to mention as they innovated, pushed and later came to define drum & bass culture. Loxy and Ink were, in part, responsible for that.
It’s not an accident that Loxy and Ink were linked to these behemoths. Between the aforementioned camps and our protagonists, there was a mutual understanding for the need to push the envelope and there was a shared love of reinterpreting musical genres- a free form approach to music that changed the landscape of what is possible creatively, Loxy & Ink have always implicitly understood this way of thinking and have exercised this thought process to this day via their own record labels, Cylon (Loxy) and Architecture (Ink).
Throughout their careers, as collaborators and individuals, Loxy & Ink continued to make and play music that connected with them on a deeper level rather than just for the sake of functionality, they both saw success as rappers and individually played and made music that stretched from dub techno to hip hop to house.
The journey outlined above, the understanding of cultural innovation and the pledge to authenticity & consistency as mentioned leads us to the Manifested Visions EP on R&S Records. A five-track release that traverses genres with ease, a release that speaks to Loxy & Ink’s love for collaboration- we’re presented with multiple vocal contributions from Tha Lion, Jody Lulati, Miriam Safo and Loxy & Ink themselves. Finnish producer Resound continues his long-standing production partnership with Loxy on ‘Give Me a Dubplate’. Genre wise we’re given hip hop, dubwise roots reggae and drum & bass.
R&S continues to show that it’s a force to be reckoned with by releasing this EP, a project that crosses countries as well as genres, a project from Loxy and Ink that feels like it was always going to come to pass since the pair found common ground way back when.
After considering all of this, it comes as no surprise that the EP is titled ‘Manifested Visions.’