Style: Experimental hip hop, ambient, instrumental
Primary Emotions/Themes: City life and soundscapes
Thoughts: What a wonderful and strange find this was. It was nearly a blind buy, having only heard a few samples of the album - something I rarely if ever do. Regardless I broke almost all my rules and picked this one up without hearing it.
When it went on my turntable I wasn't sure what direction the music was going to take. The samples I heard seemed like a bizarre mix of ambient and hip hop, and that's largely what this album is all about.
The music contained within Honest Labour has a distinctly urban feel to it. I can easily see myself driving to this on a rainy night or walking along city streets with this in my head phones. The instruments used have a beautiful mix of blurring the lines of electronic and acoustic music, and the song structures (when present) have a deep roots in urban oriented hip hop.
Most of the album is purely instrumental and contains little to nothing in the way of traditional song structures. The title track for instance revolves around a simple piano "riff" that is repeated throughout the entirety of the song. It is built upon by an analog synth that creates backing chords and is soon followed by a violin drenched in reverb. More and more layers are added in to create a warm yet somehow lonely feeling in the middle of the album.
The opener has a distant female voice that is covered by various soundscapes and urban field recordings. There is no real structure or meter to this song. Rather it's merely samples that are being phased in and out of existence as the song progresses. Much like you would be passing people on the street, you see them for a instant and then they are forgotten.
When there are vocals the album (Such as B£E) the music shifts slightly. The vocals are undoubtedly the focus of this song, and the music has a fundamental shift. There is a distant drumbeat that is often broken up between meters and minimalistic city noises to accompany. Everything comes together to form a loose amalgamation of a song but it's as distant and obscure as the rest of the album. It's only towards the end of the song where orchestral samples come into to provide any semblance of melody. It's a fascinating take on hip hop and I'm going to be looking for more music like this in the future.
Space Afrika reminds me a lot of another band that I chanced upon a few years ago: Dive Reflex Service. It's a mix of obscure ambience mixed with sparse vocals and structure. Both of these projects have created albums that fascinate me to no end. I only wish I knew what this stuff was called so I could dive deeper into the rabbit hole. In the mean time I suppose this will have to suffice.
Written January 31st 2024
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