K!MMORTAL
X Marks The Swirl
Coax Records
coaxrecords.com
This curious combination of pop, R&B, and rapid-fire, spoken word rants comes courtesy of Vancouver’s Kim Villagante: artist, dancer, musician, etc.X Marks the Swirl (the swirl representing gender fluidity) is heady hip-hop that blows the lid off ancestry, heritage, race, immigration, colonization, identity, and labels. Villagante also drops repeated references to outer space and even sacred geometry that don’t seem — on the surface — to fit with the earthly concerns being addressed, but these incongruent angles do find a way to intersect. There’s a lot to unpack here.