Space Afrika - Honest Labour - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Manchester UK's Space Afrika make music of what they term Inchoverlapping momentsInch - oblique mosaics of dialogue, rhythm, texture, and shadow, half-heard through a bus window on a rainy night. Honest Labour, the group's first full-length since 2020's landmark hybtwibt? (have you been through what i've been through?) mixtape, expands the project's palette with classical strings, shimmering guitar, and visionary vocal cameos, leaning further into their enigmatic fusion of ambient unrest and cosmic downtempo. It's a sound both fogged and fragmented, at the axis of song craft and sound design, born from and for the yearning solitudes of life under lockdown.The album title is tiered, alluding to a legendary patriarch from co-founder Joshua Inyang's Nigerian family tree (who was lovingly called InchHonest LabourInch for his loyalty and resilience) as well as the nature of self-designated work, such as Space Afrika's music - a Inchlabor of loveInch in it's truest sense. With fellow co-founder Joshua Reid recently relocated to Berlin, the pair began sharing files last fall, piecing together poetic vignettes of looping haze and found sound, inspired by the notion of Inchrecords that leave an impression, and help the listener deal with their life.Inch As the isolation of Covid compounded with the worsening winter, the songs skewed increasingly introspective and emotive, reflecting a mood of dissipating futures and the infinite nocturnal unknown.The artists cite two core motivations for Honest Labour to transcend the sum of their influences, and Inchto show what we're capable of.Inch Both ambitions are entirely realized. The collection's 19 tracks flow with a synergy and sophistication as rare as they are radical, untethered to the dusty dub-techno templates of Space Afrika's early years. These are interstitial anthems, expressionistic and open-ended, delirious but deliberat