Space Afrika

Manchester UK’s 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.

Their releases Above The Concrete/Below The Concrete (2014) and Somewhere Decent To Live (2018) were sparse, spacious yet intimate electronic abstractions, partly inspired by their observations of industrial landscapes and experiences of life in the North of England.

In 2020, Space Afrika released their most emotionally charged project to date, hybtwibt? (have you been through what i’ve been through?). First recorded for broadcast on NTS Radio before being edited down to a half-hour collage and released a few days later in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. As Black Lives Matter protests were gathering momentum across the U.S. and UK, the Manchester duo’s self-released mixtape captures the unrest with intercutting fragments of their own unreleased work. Described as a “dreamlike tapestry”, and hailed by Pitchfork and Bandcamp as one of the best ambient albums of 2020, sales of the mixtape continue to raise funds for Black Minds Matter UK and the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust in support of the fight for racial equality.

The duo went on to release in the spring of 2021, Untitled (To Describe You), a collaboration with photographer, filmmaker and poet Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh, generating a living, breathing study of the duo's Northern working-class Black British reality.

In January 2021, they announced their signing to Dais Records. Honest Labour, the duo'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 songcraft and sound design, born from and for the yearning solitudes of life under lockdown.

FAUZIA

“Moving beyond familiar club contexts in search of points unknown” — Pitchfork
“The future is bright, and FAUZIA is ready” — Mixmag

FAUZIA first broke through as a DJ. Inspired by the interwoven legacies of fast music from either side of the Atlantic, her monthly NTS show sees her blend together the best of footwork, jungle and everything in between — with the likes of Mall Grab, Kode9, DJ Taye, Om Unit and Ikonika stopping in for guest spots.

The start of 2020 saw FAUZIA start to showcase her own original music for the first time, first with a celebrated production mix for DISCWOMAN, and then with a contribution to the flagship 10th edition in HAUS of ALTR’s various artists series — picking up glowing press from Resident Advisor, Mixmag, DJ Mag, Crack and more in the process.

It was with a series of missives released during the pandemic that FAUZIA’s music really started to evolve - from the starry-eyed breaks of ‘Fragments’ through to ‘are you hoping for a miracle?’ and ‘time’, a pair of downtempo pop releases that saw FAUZIA sing on her material for the first time while also collaborating with Kelela and George Riley.

Her new live show debuted at Wysing Polyphonic in the Summer of 2021, followed by appearances supporting Loraine James and Space Afrika. December 2021 saw FAUZIA sell out her first headline at Southbank Centre’s Purcell room, accompanied by her band.
2022 sees FAUZIA working on new music, and continuing to DJ as well as select live performances.