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The lead single "B£E ft. Blackhaine" from Space Afrika's "Honest Labour" on Dais Records.
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"B£E" credits:
Starring: Space Afrika, Blackhaine, Rainy Miller
Creative Direction: Space Afrika, Blackhaine, Rory A Wood
Producer: Tom Heyes, Space Afrika
Director & Editor: Rawtape
DoP / Grade - Elliot Holbrow
1st AC - Jessy Busgeeth
Make-Up: Alex Lezza
Styling: Cal Mac
Driver(s): Joe Shenton, Cameron Elkington
Dogs: Rawbullys NW & Bashmash Bullys UK
Thumbnail photo: Timon Benson
Manchester duo Space Afrika make music of what they term “overlapping moments” - 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? 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 “Honest Labour” for his loyalty and resilience) as well as the nature of self-designated work, such as Space Afrika's music - a “labor of love” in its 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 “records that leave an impression, and help the listener deal with their life.” 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 “to show what we're capable of.” 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 deliberate, attuned to the drift and dreamstate of the present moment: “Ultimately this is an homage to U.K. energy, and an album about love and loss.”
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Space Afrika:
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LYRICS:
All alone in the flat all I see is cracked windows
I’m putting hazed in the air
Dressed in black
Do you think I care
Blank face there in the dark like prayer
Dogs on the leash 120 on dash
110s on the feet, fog blends in the flat
Rocks turned into ash
Relapse
Block dreams in the crack
Man are trynna get rich at the top of the map
There’s a grave inside your mouth I press against
I was lurking for religion I’m no saint from where the rain won’t go away
I press the stainless altercate
My vision blurry stomach ache
I never work an honest day, I’m in the corner bathe in grey
Shave an eight, I blaze up in accords,
Floodlights shining razors for us
Cutting up these things I held
These shots are babies name them for us
Stained I forwards, bloody rags upon my skin
thorns they slip down on my head
I hear the screams no sound affect
I’m down in red
I’m in the ends trynna put the steel down again
Carry wood
On the hillside surrounding men
Lost men
Trynna sell them a pound of flesh
I’m in the ends
With the blade down my trousers wet
Used to smoke weed it got stressed
Getting money is the only way I’m blessed
Red rose get a ton I’m pressed
In the city where there’s no one left
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