Brooklyn-based keyboardist and vocalist Xenia Rubinos likes to play with syncopation. Her debut album, Magic Trix, is based around rhythms that sometimes are identifiable as Caribbean, and at other times veer into the experimental.
"It's something I have a lot of fun with — just taking one rhythmic figure and turning it around as many ways as I can," Rubinos says. "That's a huge part of my compositional process, just messing around with something very simple and seeing how far I can take it."
And that's just one of the ways Rubinos' music resists classification on the whole.
"I think it's a good problem to have. Although I do aspire to eventually, concisely and clearly, explain exactly what it is I do, I'm not there at the moment," she says. "I don't really think about genres, and I think that's why my music sounds the way it does. I'm thinking more about texture and sound and flavors."
Xenia Rubinos spoke with NPR's Rachel Martin; click the audio link on this page to hear more of their conversation.
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