Interview by Liesje Verhave | Photography by Nick HeldermanFor most people, a debut novel would be enough of a creative milestone. For Xillan Macrooy, it became one part of a much larger transformation. Over the past year, the Surinamese-born multidisciplinary artist has expanded beyond the role of musician with an ambitious three-part project spanning literature, theatre and music. Beginning with a debut novel recently nominated for the Hebban Debuutprijs, continuing through an award-nominated theatre production and culminating in an upcoming album, the work traces a deeply personal journey through queerness, memory, identity and self-invention.Xillan Macrooy doesn't see these projects as separate disciplines. They're different manifestations of the same impulse: storytelling. Long before studying music at conservatory level, before performing on stages across the Netherlands, and before writing songs from a queer perspective, he was a child drawing pictures inspired by books and inventing stories to accompany them. Somewhere along the way, music became the dominant medium. The last few years have been about remembering that it never had to be the only one.At the centre of this creative expansion sits a question that has followed him throughout his life: what becomes possible when you allow yourself to be more than one thing? We caught up with Xillan to discuss storytelling, Suriname, language, queer representation, artistic transformation and why his latest body of work is ultimately about learning to let go.You recently published your debut novel, Mensen als zonnen en mensen als manen, but writing seems to have been part of your creative life long before that. When did you realise you wanted to be a storyteller rather than simply a musician?Music has been my main focus since I was a teenager. I moved to the Netherlands to study at the conservatory, and over time, music became such a central part of my identity that I almost forgot how I worked as a child. When I was younger, I moved naturally between different forms of creativity. If I read a book, I would draw something inspired by it. If I painted something, there was usually a story attached to it. I wasn't separating disciplines in the way we often do as adults. Everything was connected.At some point, I realised there was something that still felt incomplete. I love music and I always will, but when I started asking myself why I make songs in the first place, the answer wasn't that I wanted to sing. It wasn't even that I wanted to make records. The answer was that I wanted to tell stories.Once I started saying that out loud, things began to happen. People started responding to that idea. The publisher who eventually released my novel heard me talk about storytelling during a podcast and asked if I'd ever considered writing a book. It was a question I'd secretly wanted someone to ask my entire life.Writing a novel always felt like one of those dreams reserved for a very small group of people. It seemed distant. Unrealistic. But by that point I was already beginning to accept that I didn't want to be limited to a single artistic identity. I wanted to experiment. I wanted to move between worlds. I wanted to be a shape shifter.The novel began as a memoir before becoming fiction. Why did that change?Initially, I thought I was writing a coming-of-age memoir. I spent months creating timelines and mapping significant moments from my life. But the deeper I went into that process, the more I realised it was triggering things I wasn't ready to relive exactly as they happened. What I discovered was that I needed control. As a child and teenager, there were many moments where I felt powerless. Through fiction, I could become the director for once. I could decide what happened. I could alter reality without abandoning it entirely. The book became an alternate version of my life rather than a direct recreation of it.I'm very inspired by Afro-surrealism and shows like Atlanta, where the world appears familiar but something is slightly different. The rules are bent rather than completely broken. That's how I approached the novel. It's not only a story about what happened. It's also a story about what could have happened. About the versions of myself I might have become, the versions I never became, and the versions I'm still trying to become.That's why I didn't give the main character my own name. I wanted readers to understand that this was connected to my life without pretending it was a documentary. It's an alternate reality. And in some ways, that's closer to how memory works anyway. Two people can experience the exact same event and carry entirely different stories about it for the rest of their lives.Queerness sits at the heart of the novel. Why was it important to make that impossible to ignore?When I started writing, I was thinking about the stories I needed as a child growing up in Suriname. For a long time, I believed those stories didn't exist. I thought there were no books written from an openly queer Surinamese perspective. Later, while researching both the novel and my theatre work, I discovered that wasn't entirely true. There are writers who came before me. There is a queer legacy. There are people whose shoulders I can stand on. Finding that legacy made me happy, but it also made me angry.Because if those stories existed, why didn't I know about them? How different would my life have been if I'd encountered them earlier? How much confusion, loneliness and shame could have been avoided? That realisation gave me courage.I didn't want readers to wonder whether the story was queer. I didn't want the central relationships to be interpreted as friendships or hidden beneath layers of implication. The queerness is the heart of the book. It's not a subplot. I felt a responsibility to make that visible in a way I didn't always encounter growing up.The novel centres around twins. Why was that dynamic so important?Partly because I'm a twin myself. But more importantly, twins allowed me to explore the idea that there is no single way to experience queerness. We often focus on outcomes. We celebrate the moment someone comes out, finds love, becomes successful or arrives at some version of themselves. But the journey there is rarely straightforward. There is no blueprint for growing up queer in Suriname. There isn't really a blueprint for growing up queer anywhere. The twins allowed me to explore different responses to the same circumstances. Different ways of processing trauma. Different ways of finding joy. Different ways of surviving. I hope readers recognise themselves in both characters. Not because they're identical, but because they're not. That's the point. There isn't one correct way to be queer. There isn't one correct way to heal. There isn't one correct way to live a meaningful life. I think that's a lesson we still struggle with as societies. We want things to fit neatly into categories. We want a single version of the truth. But there are always multiple truths existing at the same time.Language plays a huge role in the novel. Why was it important to include Dutch, Sranan Tongo and Surinamese Dutch?That was one of the first conversations I had with my publisher. I said that if I'm writing a story about a boy growing up in Suriname, then the book needs to sound like Suriname. I wasn't interested in simplifying that experience for a Dutch audience. When I was growing up, I read books from all over the world and often had to work to understand them. Sometimes I didn't know the references. Sometimes I didn't know the words. But I still entered those worlds. I wanted readers here to experience something similar.What I love about Suriname is the fluidity of language. People move between languages constantly. Within a single sentence, someone might switch from Dutch to Sranan Tongo and back again depending on what they're trying to express.Language isn't just communication. It's culture. It's history. It's rhythm. In Suriname, multilingualism feels natural. It's alive. I wanted to celebrate that. I was also inspired by writers like Edgar Cairo, who challenged traditional ideas about how Dutch should be written and whose work embraced the reality of how people actually speak. That gave me permission to do the same.You describe language almost like music.Because for me, it is. The writing process felt surprisingly musical. I realised very quickly that language has melody. It has rhythm. It has tempo. A lot of the time, I knew a sentence was right because I could hear it. I wasn't analysing grammar or structure in those moments. I was listening. The same instincts I use when writing songs became part of the writing process. I would hear the cadence of a conversation, the flow of dialogue, the rhythm of a scene. In that sense, writing the novel didn't feel like leaving music behind at all. It felt like discovering another version of it.The novel, theatre production and upcoming album all form part of a larger three-part project. What have you learned from working across different mediums?The biggest lesson was realising how much I could trust my writing. Whether I'm writing a song, a play or a novel, storytelling remains the foundation. What changes is the medium. Theatre taught me about presence. About using the body as an instrument. About creating a moment that only exists for the people in the room that night. The novel taught me patience and depth. It gave me the space to explore things I didn't yet have the courage to write about in songs. And the album became something different because of both experiences.What's been fascinating is seeing how each project keeps influencing the others. The book inspired songs. The theatre production changed how I think about performance and even got nominated for the BNG Theaterprijs. Certain scenes in the novel gave me access to emotions I hadn't been able to reach musically before. The projects have been in constant conversation with one another.You've described this entire body of work as an act of shedding.Very much so. I had to write about a lot of things that I needed to let go of. That's one reason why I've decided to end the theatre production this year, even though there are opportunities to continue performing it. I need to move on. The project has served its purpose. Of course, there are moments of joy throughout the work, but much of it required me to revisit difficult experiences. I've learned what I needed to learn from that process.Now I'm interested in exploring joy more deliberately. Not because darkness isn't valuable, but because I've spent a lot of time there already. I want to see what happens when I direct the same level of curiosity toward joy.The album, ACT III: Time Traveler and Graver, arrives later this year. How does it fit into that journey?The album feels like a return, but not a return to who I was before. Music has been my primary medium for so long that it feels natural to end the project there. But I'm returning to it as a changed artist. I'm not going back to being a musician. I'm still a storyteller. The challenge now is bringing everything I've learned from theatre and literature back into music. Making sure those experiences remain part of the work. The album is probably the most shape-shifting project I've ever made. It moves between languages, sounds and perspectives. It's deliberately resistant to being placed in a single box. That feels important to me. For a long time, people wanted clear definitions. They wanted to know exactly what kind of artist I was. This project is my way of saying I don't want to choose.What excites you most about the future?Change. I've always been fascinated by transformation. Being a shape shifter isn't about abandoning previous versions of yourself. It's about carrying them forward while continuing to evolve. I think people are often afraid of change, both individually and collectively. We want certainty. We want stability. But I find change exciting. This project feels less like an arrival and more like a beginning. For the first time, I feel like my vision and its execution are aligned. The work looks the way I imagined it. It feels the way I imagined it. Now I want to see what happens next. I want to keep experimenting. I want to keep surprising myself. And most of all, I want to keep telling stories.Mensen als zonnen en mensen als manen is available now. The final chapter of Xillan Macrooy's three-part project continues later this year with the release of his debut album ACT III: SON. To introduce the final chapter of his project, Time Traveler and Graver will release a double single. Before that, audiences have one last chance to experience the award-nominated theatre production "A coming of (r)age ritual" live during its final performance. 

Interview by Passion Dzenga and Chalice Cox-Hynd | Photography by Fien BulsingLaunching in 2021, Echobox has been forging a path for community radio by showcasing the diverse characters and concepts that surround their station. In this feature, we will be looking into one of the broadcasts that you can tune into, so get locked in and don’t touch that dial. Echobox resident JLSXND7RS doesn’t talk about grime like a genre; he talks about it like a force. An energy that can travel, mutate, and still stay true, even whdocden it’s born in one city and raised somewhere else entirely. Long before the Dutch scene had any real infrastructure for 140, he was already tuned in: not through hype or trend cycles, but through obsession, the kind that starts with family instruments in an attic, turns into studying producer credits in The Source Magazine, and ends up on late-night forums where exclusives were passed around like contraband.Growing up Moluccan, music wasn’t an extracurricular; it was culture. And when UK sounds began bleeding into his world, they didn’t feel foreign. Hearing DJ Zinc’s “138 Trek” in Amsterdam opened one door; catching Dizzee Rascal’s “I Luv U” on TV – gabber-style 909 kick drums colliding with rap – kicked the next one clean off its hinges. From there, it was instant messenger group chats with producers like Spyro and Teddy Silencer, digital dubplates in the inbox, and Fruity Loops learned through community rather than classrooms. While others chased validation through parties, JLSXND7RS was building in isolation: outside the big cities, away from noise, developing a relationship with the UK that was direct and long-term.That connection eventually became physical. London wasn’t a pilgrimage. It was an extension of a network he’d already earned his way into. From early collaborations to being embraced by key figures, he speaks about UK support with the kind of disbelief usually reserved for origin myths: Slimzee driving him around the city, opening doors, showing real love. But the deeper story is what London unlocked sonically, a “full-circle moment” where rhythm and intent snapped into focus.Now, that same curiosity has pushed him far beyond the boundaries people expect from a grime producer. Through Scratcha DVA, Surreal Sessions, and a deep dive into South African sound, he found Gqom’s raw minimalism and recognised the same spirit that made grime matter in the first place: making something heavy from limited tools, prioritising swing and groove over polish. It’s a perspective that explains everything from his uncompromising radio selections to a Hyperdub collaboration with Ikonika, to the global ripple effect of his “Silo Pass” remix, a track he made almost casually, only to watch it bridge scenes worldwide.This tale from the Echobox is less a career recap than a map of how a sound survives: through family, through underground networks, through the stubborn refusal to play obvious tunes, and through the belief that music is something you learn, guard, and pass forward and not just consume.You’ve been pushing this sound for some time. Before we even get to grime, where did music start for you?Music came first, before grime. I started really young. It's kind of funny looking back. I grew up in a musical family. I’m Moluccan, so music is just part of the culture. At my grandma’s house, everybody gathered, nine children, and everyone played something. So music was always around. I started off on drums, which I loved. But when I was around 12, my older cousins got into gabber and trance, and they gave me all their hip hop CDs—Snoop, Wu Tang, all that good stuff. I became obsessed. I’d just sit there drumming along to them in my uncle's room. It was my way of vibing with that sound, and it really shaped my love for rhythm and beats as I got into different genres later on.I wanted to know how things were made. I was a nerd with it, reading CD booklets, checking producer credits, buying magazines like The Source, looking at what got the five mics and ordering CDs from the record store.So what was the moment UK sounds really grabbed you?Alright, so here’s how it went down. It all started with garage music in the Netherlands. I was at a party one time, and there was this DJ - by DJ Zinc - playing a track called “138 Trek”—it blew my mind! I couldn't believe the vibe and the energy. I wanted more of that sound. Then, I stumbled upon Dizzee Rascal's 'I Luv U' and it hit me; he was rapping over those gabber kicks. I was like, 'What is this magic? I need to know more!' I started digging deep online, finding all the grime I could, joining forums, and chatting with artists. I met people from London through those spaces, and added them on MSN. That’s really where grime became a big part of my life. It was a whole, wild journey that really opened my eyes to the scene."That early internet grime era was crucial: forums, MSN, exclusives flying around. What did those spaces mean for you outside the UK, and how did they shape the way you started producing?Those spaces meant everything, because that’s how you got the music and the community. At first, I wasn’t producing like that; I was just a serious listener. Everyone wanted to be the guy with the exclusive tunes, so being in those MSN groups was the whole thing.I’d be in MSN group chats with people like producers. That’s how you’d get the files. People would send you exclusives straight to your inbox, and you’d be sitting in the Netherlands with tunes people couldn’t even get elsewhere. That was the culture: the feeling of being close to the source, even if you weren’t in London.Then, through that network, I started trying production. Someone showed me Fruity Loops, gave me a copy, and showed me the basics. But even then, I never really connected with the Dutch scene the same way. The only people I was truly connected to here musically were Axel from NoizBoyz and a couple of others like SunOC. I wasn’t watching what everyone in the Netherlands was doing. I was in my own world, and living outside the big cities helped that. No distractions, no noise, nobody telling me what to make. I just developed my sound and my relationship with the UK.Do you feel like something got lost when grime moved away from those tight-knit online communities, the dubplate mentality, the competition, or did it need to evolve?It definitely changed. Back then, it was competition, everyone guarding tunes, everything feeling exclusive. I’ve still got unreleased tunes from almost twenty years ago. When I play them to certain people, it’s like, “Ahh you got that too.” But it depends on where you are.In London, that exclusivity means something very specific. In the Netherlands, most people don’t even know what they’re hearing, they’ll just say “this sounds cool,” not “that’s a rare 2005 white label.” So the meaning of exclusives changed, but the culture still exists.And the blog culture used to be wild, too. Back in the forum days, someone played a VIP and within hours, there was a rip going around. Now it’s different, but don’t get it twisted, the headsy culture is still there. People still want to own things other people can’t access. Grime has always been framed as London-centric, but you built a real identity from the Netherlands and not even from a major city with infrastructure. How much of that is your roots, and how much is the UK connection you built online?First, grime. It’s energy. It’s not just a sound. People sometimes talk about it like it’s only tied to one place, but the reason it connected with me is because of where I’m from.Where I’m from, there is poverty, survival, and madness. And in the Moluccan community, we’ve got our own history in this country. Our neighbourhoods were built like that on purpose. A lot of toxic stuff came with it, drugs, rebellion, tension with the government, and the community became very closed off. That’s real! You grow up with that in your head as a kid. Then living in London? Man, it was a wild ride. You meet so many people, and everyone’s grinding, trying to make it happen. Honestly, it was that mix of the hustle and the creativity that really shaped me. You learn a lot just being around all that talent and vibe.So when I lived there and connected with UK people later, they’d tell me, “Bro, you’re just like us, how is that possible?” But it’s possible because the environments are similar. The infrastructure might be different, but the reality of certain neighbourhoods isn’t that different. Pirate radio built grime, but you’re still heavy on radio in the post-pirate era. What does radio mean to you now, and what did it mean when people like Slimzee and the other key DJs backed you early?It meant a lot because those are serious people. Slimzee is the first big DJ to really play my music and push it: it was around 2014 and my track 'Undertaker.' was really making waves, and Slimzee got wind of it and that was it. He is genuinely one of the realest people in the scene; he did for me what he’s done for other key artists. When I came to London, he told me to call him. He drove me around, showed me everywhere. I was in his family home with his mum, all of that. That’s not normal.  Since then he's been a huge support for me. I can't tell you how many times he’s messaged me asking about new stuff. He's just genuinely invested in my journey. Plus, if you check his socials, he's always posting about old music—it's clear we both have a love for those roots.Radio now, for me, it’s still important, but the function has changed. I do radio to show people I’m a sick DJ too, not just a producer. And I’ve got endless music, unreleased, rare, weird stuff, stuff people won’t hear anywhere else. I don’t play obvious tunes. Especially in the Netherlands, the clubbing scene can be so cliché, people want the same instrumentals, the same moments. I hate that. We should be teaching people music, showing new things. With Echobox I’ve got freedom: grime, trap, sometimes techno, whatever. I’ve earned my stripes. Now I can have fun.After years of grime, you pivoted into Gqom. What unlocked that shift? And how did working with Scratcha and Surreal Sessions change how you think about rhythm, space, and sound design?The shift came from hearing South African sounds properly and then doing my nerd research. In London, Wiley was playing a lot of Amapiano – softer stuff. That was my first real exposure.But Gqom hit different. After that Boiler Room Festival, I went deep. What is Gqom, where is it from, what’s the history? I love the older, raw 808-driven style – percussion, 808, bass. I don’t need much more than that. That’s why stuff like old-school gqom connects for me. It’s raw, and it has groove.Surreal Sessions taught me a lot about the South African approach, the spacing, the swing.And the bridge is limitation and approach. A lot of producers there aren’t working with powerful computers or crazy plug-ins. They use what they have. Fruity Loops stock sounds, simple tools. Over here, we can get too clean, too designed. I tried recreating log drums with my own synths and using grime-style sound design what ive noticed is that they want the sound to stay what it is. If you make it too polished, it stops being Gqom; it becomes like a caricature. So I learned to respect the rough edges. That’s the authenticity.You talk a lot about the culture, the scene - backers like Slimzee and connections that become real friendships, across not just grime but gabber and techno. Is there a connection there with the harder genres and keeping it on a level?So, I've got this theory about it. Making music is like a release, right? You pour all your anger and frustration into it, and then it kind of calms you down. It’s almost like meditating through the music. You hear some of the hardest styles, and yet the people behind them are often super humble and down to earth. It’s like when you lay out your feelings in the music, it transforms that energy and makes you chill as a person. I think that’s why you see a lot of nice people in genres that go hard; they’re turning all that intensity into something beautiful.Beyond being a producer, an engineer and managing Chamber 45, you’re also a DJ. How does that fit in to the bigger picture for you?Being a DJ for me is a bit wild. Back in the day, if you weren’t producing, you weren't really getting booked. So, I made tunes to swap with other DJs; that was how it worked. I think everyone wants to be a DJ now, but in grime, you had to have that dual skill. I’d make a track, and big DJs would hit me up for it, and I’d share tunes, sometimes even unreleased gems from big producers. It’s funny because the same thing happens back to me—now I have tracks that people shouldn’t have! It’s all part of the grime culture.What’s your process when it comes to producing? What inspires you?My process really depends on what I'm feeling at the time. I draw a lot from the grooves in songs I love—like 80s pop, Madonna, Billy Idol, and George Michael. I also stumbled upon some weird rock music from my dad's old CDs, which sounds almost like the background music in old animes—those crazy instrumental tracks that have a unique vibe. I try to capture those rhythms and emotions when I create. Interestingly, I don't really listen to grime as much anymore; it's more about the eclectic influences that inspire me in different directions.If one era was about proving yourself, what’s 2026 about, creatively, personally, and in terms of what we can expect next?2016-2019 was trying things, building, linking with people, bridging worlds. I was moving between grime and dubstep, in the middle, people like Mala cutting my tunes to dubplate, people across scenes playing my music. London gave me that full-circle moment where I understood my sound on a deeper level.2026 is about a bigger, more personal body of work. I’m working on an album that’s literally everything I like making, all the genres that shaped me. I’m into old “freestyle” music too, that 80s Hispanic electro singing/rapping vibe. I play it in my shows, and it connects to things in Brazil too.I’m also experimenting with Scratcha’s drum kit in ways people wouldn’t expect: drum techno, drum trap, drum drill, pushing the tools into different spaces.Speaking of creating and building, you recently went viral with a song that’s been out for a decade. How did that come about?Yeah with my song Marching. So Makten, he was going outside with his decks, and then he went to Shoreditch with D Double E. And he played my song. And this went crazy viral. Like, you know, Popcaan, this Jamaican artist, he posted it on his Instagram. Like, big people from the world were all posting on Instagram. And that was, for me, that. That’s been a highlight in my musical career, basically because I made that song 10 years ago, and for it to come back was crazy. The song also got used during Red Bull Culture Clash where D Double E was part of Jamaican artist Spice team.There's even an interview that Makten did with Chucky, from London. And they touched down for 10 minutes about me, like, “who is this guy who made the song?” And they go on my Spotify. Oh, he made this and he made that. It's very funny to see, cute. So big up Makten. When that happened, a lot of big people on the scene messaged me, you've got one meaning. I've got a timeless banger. That's my pile, my oil, whatever you want to call it, that's mine, if that makes sense. So I have a certified classic in grime. So like, yeah, that’s it forever now.Last one: the name JLSXND7RS - it’s such an enigma and you don’t really talk about it. Can we get the big reveal?Alright, so the name JLSanders—it’s got a bit of a backstory. The 'J' is a nod to me, Justin, you know? And the 'L' comes from this Dutch soap opera character named Ludo Sanders, who's like the tough guy you don’t mess with, kind of the Phil Mitchell of our scene. I thought that was fitting. There’s more to it but I’m going to keep everyone guessing.Tune in to Echobox, broadcasting from below sea level every week, Wednesday until Saturday.

In 2016, liquid blackness invited Khalil Joseph for an artist talk. liquid blackness presents: Holding Blackness in Suspension: The Films of Kahlil Joseph. This talk was a panel between Khalil Joseph, Dr. Lauren Cramer (Pace University), and Dr. Alessandra Ranego (Georgia State University). But what is liquid blackness? “liquid blackness” is a term that describes several things at once:It is the name of a research group, founded in Fall 2013 by Alessandra Raengo, now Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, to collaboratively study of radical aesthetics in the visual arts and filmmaking of the Black diaspora, from the 1970s to the present;the name of an online scholarly journal, published at GSU from 2014 to 2017 and acquired by Duke University Press as liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies in 2020, which offers a forum for the exploration of experimental methodologies for the formal analysis of blackness in contemporary visual and sonic arts and popular culture at the intersection between the politics and ethics of aesthetics;a theoretical concept that probes the intersection of Black Studies and aesthetic theory and practice;[1]an immanent and object-oriented methodology that prioritizes the experience and ethics of the creative practices under consideration, whereby it is the object that each time dictates the terms of its engagement;an inclusive experimental pedagogy that exposes BIPOC students to the history of their expressive cultures and encourages them to write themselves into these same archives; a digital archive of primary and secondary materials included in the Library of Congress’s collection of Historic Internet Materials for its “cultural and historical significance”;a curatorial practice that generates original interpretive frameworks;  a praxis of community-building that gathers like-minded scholars, creatives, institutions, and community partners through its research projects and events.The same term is deployed the same term in all of these cases because, “liquidity” describes also a praxis, i.e., a way of doing things, a mode of practicing “black study” and experimenting with improvisational forms of sociality.Early on liquid blackness developed a process whereby, as part of its research projects, the group organizes critical encounters around art that simultaneously addresses scholars, artists, curators, and local communities, which are then developed into open-access publications, where the same research questions are opened up to contributions from the larger academic community.