Honour’s sisters were frightened when they first heard his music. “They said it was dark,” the anonymous producer recalled in a recent interview with Crack Magazine. “But it could get a lot darker.” Throughout Àlááfíà, his moody debut album, the PAN-signee parses the loss of his grandmother as well as their shared cultural heritage and spirituality. At times sounding like a series of warbled and crackling FM dispatches, Àlááfíà dips and weaves between jazz, gospel, trip-hop, and subdued rap production. The inclusion of field recordings, burrowed deep into gritty and impressionistic electronic sequences, give a sense of memories smudged by grief.
As he puts it, Honour didn’t just record Àlááfíà: He “built and destroyed” it via a time-consuming method that spanned three cities—London, Lagos, and New York. Using a demo version of Ableton, Honour was unable to revisit songs after he initially tracked them. “I’d have to screen-record it then take it back in,” he told Crack. Though arduous, the process yielded a layered, lo-fi effect that leaves the listener in a constant state of anticipation, as if these simmering tracks will boil over at any point.
The fluctuating levels and grainy finish of Àlááfíà recall hypnotically dialing between radio stations, likely a nod to Honour’s grandmother, who had one of the first radio shows discussing Itsekiri culture on the Western Nigerian station WNTV. The static that ripples and swells across the album does so like the memory of lost loved ones. But aside from this familial homage, a sense of ambient terror creeps through the core. It manifests in the echoed cackle and motorcycle revs on “Hosanna (Greeting2MYPPL)...” and a loop of kids singing “Ring Around the Rosie” emerging in the middle of “First Born (Redeemed).”
The latter song is disrupted by gunfire, a cue for a sudden U-turn; what begins as a shadowy collage of found sounds liquifies and warps into splattered drum fills and pitched-up vocal bursts. The payoff is sublime—if short-lived. A number of songs on Àlááfíà don’t make it past the two-minute mark, but considering their eerie and mournful melodies, it can feel like just the right dosage. “Pistol Poem (Lead Belly)” is a kind of grit-smeared rap that sounds as if it’s been submerged in earth and gravel for a decade. But curving around its rough edges are a weeping sax sample and falsetto coos that could trace their shape across a chapel ceiling.
