Genre, gender and generation bending visual artist, Tulani Hlalo, based in Glasgow, leads you down an electric valley with this MIX, where everything crackles and hums with the restless desire to dance.

The sonic scene is established with the light-hearted, cheesy, funk of music from ‘Cars That Go Boom’, bopping with nostalgia as the scanlines run over the primary colours which emerge from Hlalo’s work. But as the loud blaring from the subwoofer of the car drives away into the glistening sunset, utter bewilderment sets in as the ears are plucked straight out of the 80’s and thrust into the future. ‘2020/Tokyo Destruction’ into ‘JPEGMAFIA TYPE BEAT’ through to ‘Fast Money Music’ surround us with this neon drenched, industrial cyber-punk rift. The racket of heavy-duty tools connected to amplifiers and mixers quiets down to the smooth feeling of driving over a glass road with ‘Peroxide’ humming from the speakers. However, much like Hlalo’s night and day contrast between her multidisciplinary projects ‘My Ancestor’s Had Conflicting Interests’ (2019) and ‘No Lye’ (2017), no one note or vibe remains constant for too long. As if seeking consolation in diversity, the music mutates into ‘ketamine’, a perambulating hyperpop which crashes into many pieces against ‘Dominator’. Rogue radio frequencies in the form of ‘Cities in Dust’ pierce the DNA of this MIX, transforming the electro-dance with a rock treatment, only for it to tunnel right in the midst of a cramped nightclub on New Year’s Eve with ‘L’Amour Toujours’ followed by ‘Pick It Up’. Genres and vibes shift like tectonic plates with the suddenness of an earthquake further into soul with ‘Pretty Baby’, hyperpop again in ‘911’, and then unexpectedly possessed by the vengeful ghosts of experimental punk rock with ‘Into the Groovey’. 

Much like the cover image of Hlalo taken by Chelsea Mulcahy would evince, this MIX is all over the shop. It’s being tugged in many different directions by equal yet opposing forces, in the same manner as Hlalo’s sculpture, performance, photography and video works. Closing off with ‘Time’, we are gently carried out into a horizon-less ocean by the synth waves.