In their interview with Misha Farrant in The Wire 485, sound and movement artist NWAKKE explains how their production techniques include sampling, cutting and re-ordering audio to create new soundscapes, which often intersect with their explorations into choreography. For NWAKKE, using a DJ controller as part of the process is a small way to ensure that even using software can involve “tactility and using my hands”.

This audio – which is a new rework of a mix the artist put together for Birmingham label Everything Is Perfect in 2022, arranges “unreleased original tracks, loops & songs, now revisited with added vocals and saxophone lines.”

Emphasising the importance of being part of a group of artists who work at the crossroads of sound and movement, NWAKKE says that this mix channels those relationships she has forged through her practice, not least with collaborators Bianca Scout and Malik Nashad Sharpe, who are interviewed alongside NWAKKE in The Wire 485. Scout and NWAKKE also work together as part of the London collective Life Is Beautiful, along with multidisciplinary artists The Narrator, Abi Asisa, Jaso, Isaiah Hull, Samara Langham and Aloisius.

“It reminds me of the people I love,” she says over email, “the relationships that have come about through dance & music, from then to now. I’ve called it a “Sankofa mix” because it's about remembering; being part of this article, re-recording sections of the mix feels and felt like living through these songs & memories again, revisiting, re-gaining messages that still ring true, collecting what was forgotten. It still gives me what it did back then, maybe more now.”

Read Misha Farrant and Emily Bick's interviews with NWAKKE, Malik Nashad Sharpe, and Bianca Scout in The Wire 485. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital library of back issues.