Formed in the heart of the deep American Southwest, XIXA are a guitar-slinging rock band, uniquely attuned to the desert and their Latin roots. Combining gritty guitars, the bumping grind of chicha, and desert blues into a mesmerizing stew, Tucson’s dark, dusty gothic overlords are by turns trippy and devilish, like a jam band getting high on Diá de Los Muertos. They’re also a band whose time had come to define what they call “The New Southwest” – intense, sun-bleached music shot through with an inky gothic horror that scans like the long-lost soundtrack to a cult, macabre B-movie Western.   

Naïm Amor and Kid Congo Powers met shortly before the pandemic in Tucson, Arizona. When the complete lockdowns hit everybody, Naïm, like lots of other musicians, reclused himself in his studio and started experimenting with longtime ideas that were on the shelf. The initial idea was to combine rockabilly/garage electric guitars with electronic drum machines and bass synthesizers, a vague intuition inspired by Link Wray’s guitar tones in one hand and the electronic rawness of the band Suicide. After recording a couple tracks, Naïm got the idea of inviting Kid to collaborate in the making of some electric guitar “dialogs”.  The tracks of Tucson Safari display the two different personalities and approaches of Naïm and Kid, both passionate electric guitar players, in the form of an exploration through composition and tone. The interwoven layers of guitars reveal the particular harmonic and melodic sense of Naïm’s sound “dancing” with the unmistakable slide and fuzzy tones of Kid.