Premiere: Osheyack ‘Parataxon (Skyshaker Novox)’

Guadalajara-based artist Skyshaker will release a new album, ‘Novox 10’, via Shanghai’s SVBKVLT this month.

Across 10 tracks, Skyshaker, aka House of Vemanei founder Sky LaBeija, reimagines and remixes music from the SVBKVLT catalogue; cuts from 33EMYBW, Hyph11E, Gabber Modus Operandi, Gooooose and more are deconstructed and reassembled in thrilling, genre-spanning new forms. Through its run-time, elements of industrial techno, drill, trance, ballroom, drum & bass and more converge into a stunning electronic opus, demonstrating the artist’s versatility. You can hear their thunderous techno reinterpretation of Osheyack’s ‘Parataxon’ below. 

More than just a remix album, Skyshaker uses their lived experience across numerous genres of Black music to create a release that is described as “a vast cinematic commentary on the psychological experiences of transgender people of deeper skin color”.

In their writing about the release, Skyshaker said: “‘Novox 10’ is a vocal album of the voiceless. With the number 10 pronounced in your own native tongue, this is a collection of electronic music commemorating a decade of Black voices silenced by anti-black racism and xenophobia. The Black experience remains an inspirational cornerstone of popular music worldwide, yet Black artists with deeper skin color remain doubted, dismissed, and uncompensated. Popular music in Asia is no exception, as fair-skinned Asian artists rise to superstardom and financial prosperity off the backs of Black artistry and Black suffering. ‘Novox 10’ is a navigation beyond that contempt into a place of autonomy, authority, and commitment towards the shaping of worlds in which Black people best fit.”

“As a retracing of steps through my own coming-out process, Novox 10 revisits my utilization of diasporic sound as a means of creating surrogate family structures as an unhoused queer youth,” they continued. “After a decade of assimilation and traversing ideologies, skills I considered merely tools of survival are now celebrated as home-grown versatility that both saved my life and built a career unchained by genre.”

‘Novox 10’ will be released on 26th November. You can pre-order it here.