Janosch Troehler
Editor
«I’m done with just having music as a coping mechanism. There must be other ways, hopefully…»
Hubert Tuyishime, aka Porcelain id, released their debut album, «Bibi:1», mid-February. A conversion about identity, traumatic experiences, and music as a coping mechanism.
Hubert Tuyishime is bridging cultures, identities, and styles. As Porcelain id, the artist who migrated from Rwanda to Antwerp, Belgium, released their album Bibi:1, which received exceptional praise.
«We are only at the beginning of this calendar year, but this album could easily end up on many end-of-year lists in ten months’ time,» writes Bryan Regtop for «Dansende Beren».
The resonance had been «honestly amazing», Tuyishime tells Negative White in an interview via video call. «I got much more press than expected,» adding that keeping expectations low was a form of self-protection. «The feedback from fellow musicians was a different kind of acknowledgement. People who are better at what you do are into what you created.»
Bibi:1, released mid-February, is a highly condensed debut album containing eleven tracks, with Feeling being a short interlude in the record’s middle.
But most of all, it is a stunning work of art. Porcelain id provides at its core a folky canvas yet paints with a vast pallet of colours—indie-rock strokes, dots of electronica, faint brush tips of hip-hop, even splashes of experimental noise.
The songs effortlessly blend Western sounds with exotic elements. Some, like Low Poly or Adam Coming Home, conjure memories of The Libertines. The opener, Habibi (R U Alone?), and closer, Lights!, remind us of Nick Cave.
Occasionally, Porcelain id plays with reduced compositions—as in Moon—emphasising effects and melody. Then again, indulging in opulent grand gestures in Man Down!.
The duality, juxtapositions, harsh breaks, and sophisticated contrasts within Bibi:1 are deeply rooted in Tuyishime’s story. On the one hand, their musical upbringing brought a wealth of versatility. This diversity of influences led to the conclusion never to choose just one thing.
Then again, the album is inspired by the city’s neverending buzz. «There is never just one thing going on. You can’t really catch a break,» Tuyishime explains. «I come from a small village, so most of my world has either been on the internet or a very small group of friends or community.»
Being in the city for the first couple of years was a shock, artistically expressed in Bibi:1 through its variety of sound, or as they put it: «It would have been a shame if I only picked a single genre or experience to be the album,» Tuyishime elaborates.
«It’s about culture; it’s about finding your identity.»
The intense collaboration of Tuyishime and producer Youniss Ahamad further drove the experimental sound. Ahamad brought a significantly different musical background to the table. Ahamad started weaving non-Western elements into the sound, like the extensive use of the duduk.
«These elements brought an almost literal soul to the album. We could have done it without it. It could have been a trumpet or anything else. But it very much is not, so it goes into what Youniss works around a lot in his music. It’s about culture; it’s about finding your identity.»
Tuyishime has a hard time illustrating the significance of these sounds: «Those sounds, really… I don’t know. It’s like trying to explain who you are. That’s really hard. Youniss brought me an opportunity to find some kind of identity, to connect me to a culture that was close but I did not grow up with. It is one of those things that I will keep studying and looking into.»
«The upward failing of trying to sound like someone. I’ve tried my whole life, and I still do probably.»
The diverse sounds, paired with its sometimes sharp contrasts, make Bibi:1 objectively not easily accessible. However, you can feel the convolution of different streams coming together. And somehow, despite all of it, you can relate to the song’s high emotionality.
«I think people connect with the way I sing. I’ve had the privilege to work with artists who understand my ambitions for the sound but also pushed me towards accepting the way I sound and not compromising that in any way.»
However, Tuyishime does not think of themselves as much of a singer: «A lot of people can sing well, so it’s not that special. But the skill I try to learn, if that’s even possible, is to bring a song as real as you can. I could learn my songs in a very technical way and I would probably sound better as a singer. But it wouldn’t necessarily translate all the minute details I need to be in there to be able to sing them properly.»
But does technical skill really matter? Music history is full of people who are objectively not great singers, most famously Bob Dylan, yet they manage to touch people nonetheless.
«What do you perceive as a singer or vocalist? And what standards do you put on them? Bob Dylan and Sam France from Foxygen are two very different singers. One of them is the original, and then Sam sounds like all his influences. Because he tries to sound like them but is unable to, he becomes another sort of vocalist.»
Porcelain id sees themselves as the latter type: «It is very true to me as well. The upward failing of trying to sound like someone. I’ve tried my whole life, and I still do probably. So far, that you don’t even know whether you sound like yourself or whatever came from trying to sound like anyone else. But you don’t have to be technically good; just try to bring something as honest as you can.»
«I guess if it’s always been a way of coping, there is no way that it doesn’t affect how I write in the future.»
Authenticity is Bibi:1’s key ingredient. While the apparent layers of cultural clashes and sonic juxtapositions are intriguing, understanding Porcelain id needs an even deeper understanding of Hubert Tuyishime.
«I experienced a lot of different heartbreaks, and the way I dealt with them wasn’t necessarily healthy. The album does sound like the way I went through those hardships. It was a lot of ups and downs, and sometimes, I would be kinder to myself; other times, I wouldn’t.»
Born in Kigali, Rwanda, Tuyishime migrated to Belgium in 2007, accompanied only by the mother, as the Rwandan government prohibited the departure of the father and the sister. Hubert, however, could go because doctors could not diagnose their kidney disease. Following a dialysis treatment, a kidney transplantation was necessary at the age of 12—and countless hospital stays came with it.
In 2012, Tuyishime’s father and sister also came to Belgium. After several movements in social housing, the family is finally reunited.
Nevertheless, these traumatic, existential experiences shaped Hubert Tuyishime into the songwriter they are today: «It shaped me in many ways I’ve yet to understand or even be able to understand. I started writing consciously around 12 or 13. I spent a lot of time alone. Writing as a means of working through anything has shaped how I write and sound.»
Tuyishime describes their process as mood boarding: «I collect sounds, images, specific references to whatever situation it is, and I’ll just leave it at that. I’ve been working like this for so long that I also think like this. It’s almost borderline obsessive at times. But I guess if it’s always been a way of coping, there is no way that it doesn’t affect how I write in the future.»
Porcelain id’s challenge as a songwriter is not to get bored by themselves. Wanting to push further is engrained in their will, and they are not frightened by the abstract. «I could go as vague as anyone could ever be, but somehow, I have to be able to sound as if I mean what I’m saying—even if people actually have to listen to the lyrics, which is another thing. I’m not that hard to read. I think people make me much more complicated than I truly am…»
Why does Tuyishime think that?
«I came to this country, I got into whatever it is that the culture is, and that is perceived as truly strange. Hilarious.»
«It’s like Charlie Chaplin. If you only know the character, it’s hard to imagine there must be more. It seems very complicated when you see me light-hearted and happier and then hear certain stories or how the music sometimes sounds. It complicates the expectations people have.»
However, culturally, being in Belgium and very much into «what is perceived as Flemish music» also defies expectations towards the artist. Tuyishime deploys a bone-dry sense of humour when discussing their migration and assimilation into Belgian culture.
«It is hilarious. I came to this country, I got into whatever it is that the culture is, and that is perceived as truly strange. Hilarious. I assimilated as well as anyone could have done. But still, there’s no winners.»
«Obviously, people contain multitudes. I am not one thing. But lyrically, I’m still a poet first and a musician second. And I take the freedom to do whatever I like. But if you just read the lyrics, I do try to invite people. If I wanted to estrange people to my music I very much could, but I don’t think this album is that. There are very abrasive moments because that’s the song, because that was the thing going on in the sound.»
Tuyishime refers to Reach Me / Reaching Higher, the album’s most disruptive force, where Youniss goes all out on the beat created by Tuyishime.
But it was not an attempt to irritate or estrange, but rather to set the stage for the album’s final song: «You could come out of a party on the worst day of your life, and that’s what it will sound like. And then you still have to get home, and that’s Lights! then. So, am I complex as a human? Probably. But musically, I’m not that hard to read.»
«The only thing I was building towards was making it as a musician. And when that goal seemed to move further away each month, things just fell apart. Literally, my identity just fell apart.»
Whether or not Porcelain id’s music is overcomplicated by people when they know the artist’s story, one thing remains true: Music is an indispensable coping mechanism for Hubert Tuyishime. And naturally, it comes at a personal risk of laying one’s soul bare in public.
«I have asked myself ever since I dreamed of standing in front of thousands and thousands of people: Why? Why bother even? I think it’s part of a dream that began when I realised you could be a performer. When I saw Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.»
Porcelain id admits the maybe unhealthy nature of this relationship to music and coping:
«It could be healthy, but there was a time when I quit making music because there was no other way I could cope. And life gets in the way of so many things, including making music. Then, for the first time, I hit the wall. For almost all my teenage years, the only thing I was building towards was making it as a musician. And when that goal seemed to move further away each month, things just fell apart. Literally, my identity just fell apart.»
«There must be other ways, hopefully… So, yeah… Don’t know, should as a psychologist probably.»
«So, I don’t know why I want to share music. But I’m hoping that getting older and working with others, seeing how others make music, and seeing their reasons why will help me mature to see music not only as a coping mechanism but also as a thing to share because it can help me connect to others and learn about their experiences.»
«It is an obsession; it very much is. I hope to get more out of it because I love the greatest moments when things go well on stage or I feel something from an audience. The singing together, no matter how bad or how out of fucking tune I am, mostly. I hope to find more of that. I feel like… I’m kind of done with just having it as a coping mechanism. There must be other ways, hopefully… So, yeah… Don’t know, should as a psychologist probably.»
But it is because of the difficult times that Tuyishime became a musician. When having to stay for extended times at the hospital, they attended music therapy—and music became the only true constant in their life.
«It must have been love at first sight. It’s unconditional. At the end of my teens, I thought: If I cannot make it as a musician, what’s the point? But I still made demos. I kept recording without knowing if it would become anything. It is an unconditional love.»
Edition #107
Today, we recommend the new songs by Lov3less, Hearts, True Faith, ÄTNA, and Lost in Lona.
We are headed for a collision. We clash with glossy pop and shrieking guitars, with wobbling synths and meandering voices, with stadium-grand attitude and dark underground, with uplifting fears. There are contrasts and juxtapositions in today's songs, but underlining all of them is a passion to make it work nonetheless.
Lov3less – MMMami Mami
Glossy pop clashes with abrasive guitars. Dutch artist and activist for inclusivity and safe work in the music business Simone van Vugt, aka Lov3less, delivers with MMMami Mami a cheeky celebration of queer sex. The track rattles and shakes, stomps and punches. The bass is monumental.
Hearts – In Over Our Heads
In Over Our Heads—an honest portrayal of the mundane struggles in everyday life by four guys trying to make it as musicians. The Swedish-UK love story that is Hearts pushes the indie rock to its maximum capacity. In Over Our Heads is fast, loud, and overwhelming—a perfect soundtrack for sweaty ecstasy.
ÄTNA – Lucky Dancer
The addictive flow of Lucky Dancer's beat, juxtaposed with Inéz Schaefer's meandering voice, makes the German electronica duo ÄTNA's latest single release extremely captivating. Dreams hit the dancefloor in wafts, the sky expands with each wobbling synth line. This is the archaic soundtrack of the future.
True Faith – The Means (feat. Dutch Experts)
After their stunning single In Vain, Boston's post-punk innovators True Faith return in a collaboration with Dutch Experts. Are you ready for a collision of stadium rock-like vocalisation and post-punk's gloomy nature? The Means masters the unlikely combination exceptionally while the drums relentlessly whip adrenaline through the veins.
Lost in Lona – Lose It All
Has loss and the fears associated with it ever sounded more beautiful? Playing as Lost in Lona, Lidia Beck and Konstantin Aebli gift the world with warm indie-folk while balancing on the rope between melancholy and uplifting spirit in Lose It All. There is depth and quality in this composition, made in Switzerland.
You can listen to today's curation on selected streaming services:
Spotify • Apple Music • YouTube Music • Bandcamp
Filax Staël – Traces 04_A Drift Through Time
«Traces 4, A Drift Through Time» by the Dutch project Filax Staël challenges our perception of music.
William S. Burroughs once said: «When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.» Referencing the cut-up technique to gain insights, the author even went as far as seeing it as a form of divination.
Decades later, the project «Section 10_Traces by Filax Staël» was founded in 2013 by Dutch artist and graphic designer Bas Mantel together with Okko Perekki—cutting further into the present with their audiovisual collages.
Traces, the upcoming collection by Filax Staël, marks their first official output, accompanied by a book. The 24 tracks only span over 26 minutes, again hinting at the fleeting nature of time itself.
Today, Filax Staël presents Traces 04_A Drift Through Time—not a singular track but a compilation of Blue Dances, A < > B, and A1 a1. We hear cut-and-pasted symphonies from the silent film era, fragmented electronica, intertwined with sound recordings of 1950s instructional films. Illustrated with Mantel's signature remixing, punkish graphic style.
Filax Staël comments:
«A Drift Through Time; Time as a vehicle, non linear, no end or beginning, remixing parallel universes ... with traces of sound, fragmented memories in language and form, audiovisual collaged dimensions in black and white, raw, shape shifting sounds ... Connections of lines; crossing and coalesce, lines as routes analogous to flight maps. These fragments of memories haunt time as the fusion between image and sound, in which they merge together into new forms and meaning. One in which the spectator can experience and to which he can individually give his meaning at that moment in time.»
Traces 04_A Drift Through Time not only defies any traditional definition of a song but also questions how we listen and find meaning in sound. It purposefully challenges us—and our perception of music.
No doubt: This composition is not something you casually play in the background. It needs your full attention, combined with the will for introspection, letting your mind wander away into uncharted territory.
Pre-Listen «Desperate Art», the Debut EP by Swiss Duo Happy For Real
Switzerland's Happy For Real deliver their debut EP, «Desperate Art», on 1st March. We exclusively host a pre-listening of the record that conjures the best of indie rock and pop.
We should not be fooled by the title: Desperate Art, the debut EP by Switzerland's duo Happy For Real, is anything but depressing or desperate, at first sight at least.
The collection of five new songs, recorded in Wales, will be released on 1st March but celebrates an exclusive pre-listening premiere with Negative White.
Olivia Virgolin and Marcus Petendi, after a couple of single releases, reinvented themselves musically. On the surface, the songs on Desperate Art are driven by polished pop melodies. But the duo scratches into the shiny veneer with dominant guitars, conjuring the grand days of indie rock.
The more you listen to the EP, the more the underlying edge and sophistication appear—the pop fades to a mere vehicle to deliver addictive hooks, but in its place, the extravagant contrasts take the spotlight. The sound evokes a feeling of ambivalence, of action and lethargy.
Desperate Art starts with Limbo, waiting with an intricate, almost complex rhythm. It takes a while to acclimate. Then, with Phony, Happy For Real dive deep into the indie territory—and the back and forth between the voices of Virgolin and Petendi becomes exceptionally impactful.
The voices' interaction is the EP's and Happy For Real's best feature: Virgolin indulges in emotional sensitivity and tender thoughtfulness, while Petendi channels sinewy energy, pulling the compositions into a borderline pop-punkish sphere.
ATRT is the EP's roughest track, even further down the indie rock rabbit hole—full of longing, pushing for the horizon beyond. News, then, is a groovy closure to Desperate Art.
However, the crown jewel is spot-on in the middle: Limerence. There is a sense of nostalgia, even melancholia, slumbering between the drifting lines. But then, there is also the undeniably danceable sound. The song feels like a time travel back to the summer of 2005—surfing on indie rock high tide and coming-of-age insecurities. «It's okay to feel lost sometimes!»
I Tracked the Time I Worked for Negative White
For the past six weeks, I tracked how much time I spent working for Negative White. Here is the breakdown.
Running an online magazine like Negative White takes a lot of effort. It not only costs money but also takes a lot of time: Attending concerts, listening to new releases, researching, reading, writing, editing, and distributing. There is a reason why most music blogs are volunteer-run: Financing this operation with fair wages is incredibly hard.
Running an online magazine like Negative White takes a lot of effort. It not only costs money but also takes a lot of time: Attending concerts, listening to new releases, researching, reading, writing, editing, and distributing. There is a reason why most music blogs are volunteer-run: Financing this operation with fair wages is incredibly hard.
While it is reasonably easy to track the financial costs for Negative White, the time investment is exponentially more complex.
It is journalism's nature to constantly loom somewhere in consciousness, hunting for the next story. It makes time tracking challenging: When you see a potential story on social media, is it already counted as work?
I have previously done rough estimations of how much time Negative White requires. However, they remained rather vague. So, I set up a system to track the time I spend working for the platform as accurately as possible.
Today, six weeks later, it is time for a preliminary analysis.
In the past 42 days, I tracked 52 hours and 25 minutes of work for Negative White, which means I spent more than a full working day every week.
The time tracking system entailed eight categories, distincting various tasks necessary to keep the blog's engine running. Here are the individual breakdowns:
Writing: 20 hours 30 minutes
Fortunately, writing took up most of my time. It includes everything from research to actual writing, editing, and production process for almost every article published during that time. However, I excluded the newsletters «rewind» and «Weekly5» as they have their own categories.
The time invested resulted in 22 articles, which amounts to less than an hour per story. However, some were short news posts, while others took significantly longer. Also, the work for two of these stories started before the time tracking.
Weekly5: 14 hours 5 minutes
Rather unsurprisingly, the weekly song curation also took a large chunk of my time. I have already described the process for Weekly5 in great detail. The time tracking concludes that I spent roughly 2 hours on each of the six published editions.
Rewind: 5 hours 40 minutes
During the tracked period, the bi-weekly newsletter «Rewind» switched frequency to a weekly schedule. I wrote five editions and spent about an hour on each one. However, this category is undoubtedly the most unreliable since I did not track content curation from other sources.
Administration & Planning: 5 hours 20 minutes
Here is the most mundane category: cleaning up the email inboxes, managing the content schedule, and other tasks in the broad scheme of «stuff and things». It is not fun but necessary nonetheless.
Concerts: 4 hours
Again, the time tracking here is only a rough estimation of about 2 hours per evening—one was the concert of Moyka, the other one of Son Mieux. It only entails attendance, but neither travel time nor writing.
Social Media: 2 hours 5 minutes
Today's necessary evil: Managing accounts on several social media platforms to distribute and promote our content. Currently, Instagram grabs most of this time.
Archive Migration: 30 minutes
Shamefully, there was little time I could dedicate to moving the archive migration forward.
Technical Updates: 15 minutes
Sometimes, our website needs some maintenance work, but thankfully, it is almost always an easy and quick task.
Now, what can we take away from all these numbers?
My tasks as editor and only writer at Negative White amount to a good 20% position. Since I work full-time, I distribute this workload throughout the week, often early mornings and late evenings, but also on weekends.
If I reduce my workload in the job to 80% and invest a day into Negative White without taking a financial hit, the magazine would need to generate around $1,520 before taxes every month—additionally.
Then, the total running costs would increase to about $20,000 annually, and 363 premium subscribers ($55/year) are needed to cover these costs. It is not a lot of people, but at the same time, it is a lot. You can calculate the financial impact of a full-time employee yourself.
Like Negative White, most music blogs out there in the vast sea of the internet are run voluntarily—maybe with some form of small revenue streams to cover some of the costs, but nowhere near enough to pay salaries.
Managing a serious blog on any subject, however, takes a lot of time, as my time-tracking experiment showed.
The problem inherent with this setup is its high insecurity: As the work does not pay for anything but is sustained solely by passion, it is subject to drastic deprioritisation if personal circumstances change. Maybe the editor starts a family, perhaps the job gets more demanding, or maybe the balance between creative tasks and administrative chores gets off. The latter two reasons were a driving force for Negative White's hiatus from 2020 to 2023.
No, there is no satisfying conclusion to this problem or this story. If I had it, I would be floating in money or writing a glorious takeaway lesson for you.
Instead, I can leave you with one last number: Writing this article took me about 3 hours. If you think it was worth your time, consider becoming a premium subscriber and support Negative White financially. Thank you.