Twelve months on from making her European live debut at Roadburn Festival, Backxwash makes a surprise return as a late-in-the-day announcement, closing out the main stage of the festival's first day. It's testament to just how much the Dutch event has evolved from its doom and stoner roots over the past 25 years that the Zambia-born, Canada-based artist - real name Ashanti Mutinta - doesn't feel like a stylistic outlier so much as the perfect send-off for a day that has seen the likes of Clipping. and Lord Spikeheart - frontman of Kenyan grindcore transgressives Duma - show how hip hop is intersecting with the modern alternative music scene.
Mutinta might have started out in the realms of trap metal, but set opener - and new single - Wake Up shows she is on the cusp of something altogether different after finishing a trilogy of releases with 2022's His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering. Across a sprawling eight-minutes, Mutinta's furious flow and titanic beats remain instantly galvanising, but its the track's incorporation of gospel and R&B elements that suggests Mutinta is breaking away for new territories.
