Venus Ex Machina is the production alias of Nontokozo F. Sihwa. Trained in mathematics and audio engineering, she is driven to create by her boundless curiosity and interest in futurism and post-humanism. Regular readers will be familiar with her work through Lux, her debut album of ominous ambient and tough, driving techno rhythms that landed on AD 93 in 2021. (The record was inspired by seeing a Throbbing Gristle show.) But she has also contributed music to an installation for Hyperdub and a score for Channel 4’s short-film series, Random Acts. She returned to AD 93 last year with Doxa, on which she delivered nine tracks of gnarly EBM, and a third album is in the works featuring collaborations with Valentina Magaletti on drums, Amy Langley on cello, and Florence Rutherford-Jones on violin. While that comes together, Sihwa returned to her west London studio to prepare an XLR8R podcast, filling it with the music that she has been listening to over the past year. Expect just over an hour of dark and dazzling techno beats coming from Objekt, Tzusing, E-Saggila, and more.

01. What have you been up to lately?
The highlight of the past few months was playing at Minimal Music Festival in the beautiful Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam in April alongside Loraine James, Derozan, and Coby Sey. Currently, I am doing a residency at HQI in West London. I have also been learning to play the cello and reading “The World, the Flesh and the Devil” by JD Bernal, a futuristic essay published in 1929 that ponders the possible course of the development of humanity.

02. What have you been listening to?
I live on a busy street in London, so the sound of traffic mostly, punctuated by lots of dark, abstract electronic music such as Pan Daijing, Vessel, and Coil.

03. What is it that appeals to you about dance music?
When we dance together, we get to feel as if we are outside the the cages of our bodies and impervious to the challenges of surviving late stage capitalism. Dance music allows us to lose ourselves in a crowd and synchronize our feet with the pulsing rhythm, but most of all dance music as we enjoy it today is a reminder of the innovative imagination of Black people in the American midwest.

05. Where and when did you record this mix?
Over the course of a few days, between my home in Dalston and my studio in White City.

06. How did you go about choosing the tracks?
Some I have had on repeat recently, while others are the fruit of digging through Bandcamp. I chose a long list of tracks that I liked and then I picked the ones that work together in sequence and wove them together to create a series of moods—a story, if you will.

07. What can the listener expect?
A little bit of a quest through my emotional (and other) excesses.

08. How does it compare to what we might hear you play out live?
The common thread in all of my performances is that I am a storyteller.

09. What’s next on your horizon?
I am working on my third album, and preparing a new live performance which I will debut at Berlin Atonal, followed by dates at L.E.V. Matadero in Madrid, Ultima Festival in Oslo and a few other shows to be confirmed.

XLR8R Subscribers can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Gonçalo Penas “A Cicatriz” (Subtext Recordings)
02. Ziúr “Febrile Next” (Now Now)
03. Nkisi “Dark Noise” (Arcola)
04. Objekt “Ballast” (Objekt)
05. Tzusing “Clout Tunnel” feat. Suda (PAN)
06. bergsonist “المغرب” (Bizaarbazaar)
07. Machine Woman “It Feels Weird” (Take Away Jazz Records)
08. King Mzaiza Music “Sithi Sithi” feat. U-Girl, Fezela, Da Goons, Alligator (Pssngr)
09. Zebra Katz “Moor” (The Vinyl Factory)
10. Dawuna “baby boy” (O___o?)
11. E-Saggila “Rainstain” (Summer Isle)
12. Blawan “No Rabbit No Life” (XL Recordings)
13. Jlin “Embryo” (Planet Mu)
14. 3Phaz “Slomo Strut (E-Saggila remix)”
15. Objekt “Bad Apples” (OBJEKT)
16. Hiro Kone “Pure Expenditure” feat. group A (Dais Records)
17. Evita Manji “Body/Prison” (PAN)
18. Aphex Twin “35 Japan” (Self-Released)
19. 33EMYBW “Drum” (SVBKVLT)
20. Scratchclart “IC3 (Menzi Remix)” (Hakuna Kulala)
22. Hieroglyphic Being “This Is 4 The Rave Bangers” (Technicolour)
23. Santa Muerte “Coahuiltecan” (Hyperdub)
24. Lucy Railton “To The End” (Modern Love)