Kamixlo Goes Full Slasher Mode on This Halloween Mix

Kamixlo has mixed emotions about Halloween, but this is not to say he’s opposed to dressing up in general. During our interview, the Chilean-English artist grabs what looks like a luchador (Mexican wrestling) mask custom-designed by his close friend and designer Nasir Mazhar from the chest of drawers behind him and holds it up to his video camera. One half of the mask has tufts of light pink feathers and a heart-shaped diamanté-studded eye, and the other is adorned with jagged teeth, leather harnesses, and silver metal detailing. This side is “meant to have a horn,” he informs me, brushing a lock of his blue-dyed hair from his face, “but when I was DJing in Russia, some drunk asshole ripped it off.” The split personalities correspond to his very first EPs Demonico and Angélico.

Although he may have his costume ready-made, Kami is more likely to be celebrating the holiday and this Friday’s release of his debut album Cicatriz, on PAN, indoors in his Brixton flat. The thought of Halloween in London punctures old childhood wounds. “I remember one of my earliest memories of trick-or-treating and I was just out there in the streets and out of nowhere, some kid just put me in the most severe headlock,” he recalls. “I was in so much pain. He stole my candy… Two minutes later, my cousin got it back for me, but still that was quite traumatic.” Since then, he’s sequestered himself from all the October 31st hijinks and gallivanting, instead attempting to watch all of The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episodes in chronological order—a yearly tradition dating back since he was a teenager.

All things considered, Kami is more into The Simpsons’ “silly horror” or the “fucked up, super gory, but, like, super stupid horror” of the Bride of Chucky (with a soundtrack by Rob Zombie, of which he’s an avid fan) and low budget independent Troma Entertainment productions such as The Toxic Avenger, than anything too try-hard sinister. The wacky irreverence of his taste in scary movies can also be found in the tenebrous corners of his own work, including Cicatriz (or ‘scar’ in Spanish). Take, for instance, ‘Demonic Y (feat. Felix Lee)’; Kami tells me the ‘Y’ is an inside joke and the vocals are an a capella he “pitched down super heavy” and feels like “it kind of sounded like a little demon shouting,” hence its given name, but all of the album is “pretty emo shit, to be honest,” he self-deprecates.

His mix is no different—the “chaotic Halloween-y” half-hour he’s prepared for EB kicks off with The Undertaker theme remix, a nod to the WWE American heavyweight champion who rose to prominence using supernatural themes, as well as a reference to Kami’s own love of the sport. (He titled the track ‘Destruction’ after an annual wrestling tour in Japan that he once attended.) The fog of spooky atmospherics dissipates into hard trance looped with samples of underground favorite Opus III’s “It’s a Fine Day”—an elevation of the classic horror children’s choir. K-pop band BLACKPINK also drop in on a distortion of “How You Like That,” although their candy-sweet vocals have transmuted into accelerated chipmunk squeals over a ricocheting trap beat, a sound that can only be likened to the feeling of taking PCP in a haunted house of mirrors. The apotheosis of his session comes in a little over half-way through with a dembow-inflected theme from The Exorcist, heightening an elastic tension that eventually snaps into full slasher mode. Blast this mix full volume while you’re howling at the moon.

This holiday, Kami informs me, will actually be host to a rare blue full moon—the first of such a lunar occurrence since 1944.  “Yeah. It’s going to be like fucking crazy. Whenever there’s a full moon, there’s always some drama that happens in my life somewhere,” he confesses, slightly resigned, “I’m quite scared.”

Cicatriz is out now on PAN records. Buy the album here on Bandcamp. 

Whitney Wei is the Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Beats. Follow her on Instagram.

Artwork by Ekaterina Kachavina, the Visual Editor of Electronic Beats. Follow her on Instagram.

Published October 31, 2020. Words by Whitney Wei.