Labour exchange

Joe Muggs introduces the shapeshifting work of Space Afrika, aka Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid, Artists in Residence for Sound Unwrapped

What's startling about Space Afrika is the way each move they make illuminates what came before. Their early EPs were broadly techno, and sounded lo-fi, but when the ultrafinessed space dub of Somewhere Decent to Live came along in 2018 it threw into relief just how deliberate every minuscule textural detail had been on its predecessors. Then their NTS radio shows and hybtwibt? (Have You Been Through What I’ve Been Through?) mixtape in 2020 used that textural detail to make potent political and philosophical statements – which added new weight and intent if you listened back to Somewhere Decent to Live. All of this in turn was transformed for listeners when 2021’s Honest Labour dropped: its huge dynamic range, its incorporation of other voices and visuals, its compositional rigour, all showed Space Afrika’s spectacular ambition and how they embodied the networks they rose out of. Again, the work before made new sense, as precursors to this grand statement, its forms and themes echoing backwards in time. And this new presentation at Kings Place of Honest Labour with orchestra will throw a whole different light on it.

None of which is to say that Josh Inyang and Josh Reid had this all planned out. They didn’t decide when they started making techno tracks that Honest Labour was a few years down the line. But it’s the natural corollary of the way they work and who they are: they represent a culture that’s do-it-yourself in the truest sense, that is about a constant accumulation of materials and tools from their environment to express what they’re going through. They were collagists from the start, piecing together their identities as young Black Britons, northerners, Mancunians, scholars, clubbers, artists, as participants in a diverse music scene, all into a coherent whole. And Space Afrika is a collage across the entire existence of the project. While each release or broadcast remains discrete, it also forms part of a greater flow of those identities and influences, where the essences of Joy Division and Dizzee Rascal, of Echospace and Wu Tang Clan, of cyberpunk and Coronation Street, all make sense together.

28 Jan Space Afrika

Honest Labour

Jul (date tbc) Space Afrika presents...

Oct (date tbc) Space Afrika d&b Soundscape set

And it’s not just about Inyang and Reid. The cavalcade of renegades who appear on Honest Labour show this is a collage of people as much as ideas and, more than that, the demonstration of how different parts of identity and sound work in a living collage is a model for a generation. This is the generation where oppositions of underground and mainstream mean little, where ‘Black music’ can mean indie, ambient, classical and/or deconstructed club just as much as it means soul, jazz, drill or grime, where what matters is less your genre than your aesthetic: how you reflect the overwhelming tides of information that mingle uniquely around you. Which is what Space Afrika do, so gloriously. From the beginning they created an aesthetic that is meticulously made from parts that only they could choose, and as they step onto bigger and bigger stages that aesthetic – even the parts that they’ve already crystallised – grows with them.

Fri 28 Apr | Hall Two 8pm

Stick in the Wheel

folk soundscape

East London duo Stick in the Wheel's intense live shows explore the raw holler of folk, electronics, spoken word and intricate psychedelic guitar. Fullforce reworkings of centuries-old work-songs and texts speak to contemporary issues of class - an inherently political act. Their relentless approach to questioning traditional music forms is matched only by the energy with which they play it. Full of hope and resistance, they celebrate music from our collective histories - conjuring the past to point toward the future. This special show will create immersive, spatial versions of tracks old and new using d&b audiotechnik's Soundscape system.

£18.50 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin

pop group Vanishing Twin and improvisational duo Tomaga in the 2010s, Magaletti’s collaborative instinct and skill have seen her record and perform with Nicolas Jaar, Thurston Moore, Bat for Lashes, Gruff Rhys and many more. Performing solo utilising d&b Soundscape, expect free jazz, drone and percussive elements to meet sound system frequencies to devastating effect.

£16.50 + concession tickets

Earlier this year, legendary Chicago label Drag City quietly Ghosted, a transcendent collaboration between Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin. The trio connected in 2018 at Stockholm's Studio Rymden, focusing their powers on the fertile space between Steve Reich's classical minimalism and Talk Talk's emotional fluidity. Australian guitarist Ambarchi is one of the experimental scene's most recognisable figures, with iconic albums on Kranky, Editions Mego and his own Black Truffle label, while Swedish bassist Johan Berthling is best known for performing in bands such as Fire! and Tape. Drummer Andreas Werliin completes the puzzle, bringing his varied experience playing with Wildbirds & Peacedrums and Fire!

£22.50 + concession tickets

Fri 26 May | Hall One 8pm

12 Ensemble & GBSR Duo

contemporary

Mica Levi Lonely Void from Under the Skin

Mica Levi Love from Under the Skin

Fausto Romitelli Flowing down too slow

Laurence Osborn TOMB!

Harold Budd/Brian Eno, (arr. 12 Ensemble & GBSR Duo) Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble combine to explore ascent and descent: visions of heaven and hell from the lonely void of Mica Levi to Harold Budd & Brian Eno’s glittering, suspended Ambient 2 in a new arrangement by the performers. Before that, Laurence Osborn's new work TOMB! uses the genre of the ‘tombeau’ to take a sideways look at classical music's death fixation.

£25 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Fri 26 May | Hall Two 8pm

Crick Crack Club Storytelling in The Dark

word

The Crick Crack Club cooks up an experiment of wild uncertainty. Come with us into the unmapped terrain of stories told in the dark, shot through with enchantment, transformation, things lost, things found, grown-up fairytale and weird myth. Here, your ears will be your guide, and anything you see happens in the cinema of your imagination. Voices, stories, you, and your companionswhoever they may be. Follow us into the dark. Suitable for adults .

£15 + under 30s £8.50 + concession tickets

Sat 3 Jun | Hall Two 6pm + 8pm

Robert Henke Dust

contemporary soundscape

Pioneering composer, artist and software developer Robert Henke is known for his contributions to contemporary electronic music, as both a composer and co-creator of the music software Ableton Live. Turning matter into particles, relentless, agitating, wild, or calm, quiet and intricate, Henke’s granular surround sound performance ‘Dust’ is a wild journey into a vast sonic world. Based on field recordings captured whilst traveling around the planet, collected and archived during more than twenty five years, Dust is an ever growing and mutating improvised work. New materials replace older ones, new algorithms provoke new results and no two performances are alike. His performances for Sound Unwrapped will make use of the power of the d&B audiotechnik Soundscape system.

£20