Sumil Heera, best known within electronic music circles as XO is an up-and-coming 20 year old, Staffordshire, UK-based producer and songwriter, who has quickly received both national and international attention for a sound that possesses elements of neo-soul, funk, hip-hop and deep house with an abstract twist; in fact, in a relatively short period of time, Heera’s work has received attention from the likes of media outlets such as Pitchfork, NME, Annie Mac’s Friday Night on BBC Radio 1, this particular site and countless numbers across the blogosphere, as well as praise from the likes of Diplo and SOHN.
After the release of his first two, critically acclaimed EPs, Heera has returned with the release of “Divine Disaster”/”Night Time Solace,” a collaboration with Australian-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and producer James Chatburn, who has developed a reputation across the European Union and international for his own soulful production which possesses elements of soul, blues and electro pop, his own solo work and collaborations with producers in Australia and Europe, and for being one half of indie electro pop/electro soul act The Septembers.The A-side single “Divine Disaster,” pairs Chatburn’s silky smooth, soulful vocals with Heera’s wobbling and woozy, house music-leaning production consisting of chopped up, twinkling keyboard chords and backing vocal samples, skittering and propulsive drum programming to craft a song that’s danceable yet soulful, ethereal yet subtly muscular, hyper-futuristic but leans heavily towards classic house and R&B.
Shot on a cold and miserable day in Southeast London, much of the black and white music video for XO’s “Divine Disaster” was shot in a location that was featured in a famous scene in Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange— the scene where Alex takes on his own Droogs — and in the TV series Misfits. Although reportedly drawing from classic British gangster flicks, the video shifts and turns perspectives in a way that emphasizes the wobbling and woozy nature of the song.