Honest Labour - Vinyle Violet Translucide

Description

Manchester duo Space Afrika make music out of what they call overlapping moments—oblique mosaics of dialogue, rhythms, textures, and shadows heard through a bus window on a rainy night. Honest Labour follows the 2020 mixtape hybtwibt? (have you been through what i've been through?) and broadens the project’s palette with classical strings, shimmering guitar, and visionary vocal cameos by further leaning into their enigmatic fusion of turbulent ambient and cosmic downtempo. It’s a hazy, fragmented sound, bordering composition and sound design, born from and for the fervent solitude of lockdown life. The album title has multiple readings. It alludes to a storied patriarch from co-founder Joshua Inyang’s Nigerian family tree, who was affectionately dubbed ‘Honest Labour’ for his loyalty and resilience. It’s also a reference to the nature of the work in question, like Space Afrika’s music, a “labour of love” in the truest sense. With fellow co-founder Joshua Reid having recently moved to Berlin, the pair began sharing files last autumn, assembling poetic vignettes of hazy loops and found sound. As Covid isolation deepened alongside winter, the songs became increasingly introspective and emotive, reflecting a headspace tied to the dissipating uncertainty of the future and the infinite nocturnal unknown. The artists cite two core motivations for Honest Labour: to transcend the sum of their influences and to show what they’re capable of. Both ambitions are entirely realized. The album’s 19 tracks flow together with a synergy and sophistication as rare as it is radical, detached from the dusty dub-techno templates of Space Afrika’s early years. These are interstitial, expressionistic and open-ended anthems, delirious yet deliberate, attuned to the drift and dream-state of the present moment.