Xenia Rubinos
Incorporating wide-ranging influences including but not limited to R&B, jazz, and hip-hop, Xenia Rubinos' eclectic style is guided by expressive vocal performances inspired in part by the likes of Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. Her debut album, 2013's Magic Trix, delivered an inventive indie rock patchwork of jazz, hip-hop, funk, Caribbean rhythms, and electronics. She continued to test boundaries on equally colorful, sociopolitically informed releases such as 2021's Una Rosa.
Raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a household with Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage, Rubinos sings in both English and Spanish. While her parents weren't musicians, they were music fans who encouraged her not only to sing but to start on the piano at the age of four. By eight, she was using a karaoke machine to record songs and make mixtapes. A scholarship to the Berklee College of Music resulted in formal voice study, but after an instructor compared an assigned horn arrangement she had written to Charles Mingus, she studied up on his recordings and was inspired to shift her focus to composition.
Following graduation and a move to Brooklyn, Rubinos sang and played keyboards on her debut album, which included performances by drummer (and former Berklee classmate) Marco Buccelli and bassist Adam Minkoff. The resulting Magic Trix was self-released in 2012. Ba Da Bing Records gave it an official label release a year later, and Rubinos went on to tour the U.S. and Europe as both as a headliner and in support of acts including Battles, Deerhoof, and CocoRosie. Produced again by Buccelli, and with Rubinos playing bass on some tracks in addition to keys, her equally ambitious follow-up, Black Terry Cat, arrived on Anti- in 2016.
While working on material for her third album, Rubinos recorded a Spanish-language cover of the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" for the 2018 documentary I'm Leaving Now (Ya Me Voy). It was released as a single by Anti- in 2019. The album, Una Rosa, followed on the label in 2021. Recorded again with Buccelli, it expanded electronic, rumba, and Spanish-language components while reflecting a more spontaneous approach to recording.
© Marcy Donelson /TiVo
Discography
10 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Una Rosa
Alternative & Indie - Released by Anti - Epitaph on Oct 15, 2021
Pitchfork: Best New Music24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Black Terry Cat
Alternative & Indie - Released by Anti - Epitaph on Jun 3, 2016
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Magic Trix
Alternative & Indie - Released by Ba Da Bing! on Apr 1, 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Levitating
Hip-Hop/Rap - Released by Xenia Rubinos, Sammus & Olga Bell on Jan 16, 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
DIOSA vs. BUGEISHA
Alternative & Indie - Released by Anti - Epitaph on Nov 19, 2019
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Should I Stay or Should I Go
Alternative & Indie - Released by Anti - Epitaph on May 1, 2019
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
No Me Dejes Caer
Xenia Rubinos, Carolina Oliveros
Alternative & Indie - Released by Anti - Epitaph on May 16, 2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
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Dia Libre en el Yanky
Alternative & Indie - Released by Anti - Epitaph on Jul 18, 2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo