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Interview by Passion DEEZ From the Studio Ghibli scores she grew up with to the club sounds she discovers behind the decks, Saïna brings different worlds into her music. The London-based singer-songwriter, DJ and producer draws on her Japanese and English roots, moving between alternative R&B, neo-soul and electronic music with vulnerability and personal discovery at the centre. Her storytelling extends into film, giving shape to the emotions and experiences she works through in her songs.On Hotel 555, the second chapter of her trilogy, Saïna explores the uncertain space between feeling broken and beginning to heal. Taking its name from a love hotel in Japan where she once staged a photoshoot, the project brings together an EP and accompanying short film to explore desire, escapism and the parts of ourselves we don’t always want to face. We caught up with Saïna to talk about her childhood soundtracks, taking control of her career, confronting her shadow and finding the thread between music and moving images. Step inside Hotel 555 and get familiar below.For anyone getting familiar with you for the first time, who is Saïna and what world are you inviting them into?I’m Saïna, a singer-songwriter and DJ. I also produce and direct videos. The themes I’ve been exploring in my songs over the past few years have been around vulnerability, resilience and transformation. For Hotel 555, part 2 of my trilogy, I delve into the world of the unconscious and the liminal space between feeling broken and beginning to heal.Growing up between Japanese and English cultures, how has that shaped your identity and the way you approach music?From a child, I was encouraged to practise piano or guitar daily. Grades never interested me, but what did was film scores and theme songs. In particular, Joe Hisaishi’s Studio Ghibli film scores moved me - the magical jazz tones and unforgettable melodies really resonated with me. Yearly trips to Japan until I was 12 fed that too, and later I discovered city pop - complex but catchy in a way that I still find mesmerising.London is so diverse - everywhere you go, you hear different sounds and genres; I’m still learning names of today. Living in such a metropolitan city, I feel free to create new blends of old and new from all around the globe.What did your time at the BRIT School teach you, and what did you have to unlearn once you began finding your own voice?Firstly, it taught me I wasn’t top of the class in music anymore. Haha, but for real, it was a challenge. Being surrounded by so much talent, many who’ve gone on to do amazing things, inspired me to become a better musician.There was nothing to “unlearn”, really, but once I’d finished school, I realised I had to be proactive and business-minded if I was to survive in the music industry. I tried a few managers, learnt a few lessons along the way, and realised that, for the time being anyway, I’m capable of managing my own career.Hotel 555 explores the space between death and rebirth. What was ending in your life when you began creating the project, and what was beginning?Out Of Sync (Part 1) is about the negative consequences of being out of sync with yourself. As doom and gloom as it sounds, it represented the ending of an old way of living, the silver lining being that I created art by “painting with my blood”.I still feel like I have these little deaths and transformations. I feel I handle pressure pretty well, but most of us experience breaking points of one kind or another - and they can be really challenging, but also an opportunity to explore something new in life.Hotel 555 sits in the space between those two phases.Why did a hotel feel like the right setting for this story?In 2024, I was introduced to the concept of ‘love hotels’ and found it very intriguing for such a quiet, modest culture. That year, I did a photoshoot with Calvin Ma at a love hotel in Japan purely to get a cheap ‘studio’. We discovered there are some interesting (to say the least) rooms around Tokyo. There was something about the anonymity and secrecy of these places that resembled escapism, desire or dreams. As the EP’s concept developed, the rooms slowly evolved into the emotional states on the path to some kind of transformation.The number 555 is often associated with transformation and change. What does it mean to you personally?Funny story, Hotel 555 was the name of the hotel we shot in. I thought it was a very mysterious name for a hotel, and it stuck with me. I’ve never been into angel numbers, but out of curiosity, I looked up the meaning of 555. And guess what? Transformation. Is that not a crazy coincidence? As soon as I decided this was to be the EP title, I started seeing the numbers everywhere -  number plates, ticket machines, someone’s tattoo. I even have a whole photo album of the 555s I’ve spotted!As executive producer, how important was it for you to bring together the right team to help shape the sound and story of the EP?Each track was built block by block. For example, Desire was produced by Zuma., based in Tokyo, who sent me the production while I added the opening strings and some subtle layers as I recorded my vocals. Each producer, Matthew Sperring on Dreamscape; zuriel on Darkest Hours; Zuma. on Desire and For The Love; Jacob May on Merry Go Round, all helped me showcase a body of work that presents different sides to my Alternative Rnb sound. Collaboration is key for finding new angles on your own sound and concept. As an executive producer, I have ultimate control, but I remain open to the ideas and sounds the others bring to each song, selecting the elements to keep it cohesive.The project moves between alternative R&B, neo-soul and electronic music. Which artists, scenes or experiences helped shape its sonic language?AUDREY NUNA’s track ‘Mine’ influenced Desire - that electronic blend of Jersey Club and pop I’d been discovering through DJing. Darkest Hours pulls from Studio Ghibli’s emotional chord work and orchestral instruments, while the fourths give it a Japanese tone. These are just a couple of examples, but underneath it all, soul and Rnb have always been at the heart of my sound - from Amy Winehouse, Kali Uchis to Jhene Aiko…How does your experience as a DJ influence the way you build rhythm, atmosphere and transitions within your own records?It puts you in the listener’s shoes. You see how the room reacts, how tension builds. It’s also let me flip my own tracks into remixes, taking a song I poured my heart and soul into writing and turning it into a club-ready track for people to move to. In Darkest Hours, I wanted a sound you could picture live. Using all live drum kit sounds, I built tension through the bridge into a crescendo, where my vocals take the back seat and the production takes over. It carries me somewhere deeply heartfelt - I even found myself tearing up sometimes during the recording.  There is a textural appeal to film, bouncing between different camera types, surveillance cameras, Super 8, and digital cameras. Why did you make this choice?Each look gives a different feel. Super 8 gives Dreamscape (shot in Okinawa) a distant, dreamlike quality. It explores only being able to see my lover when I close my eyes - a memory, daydream, a fantasy? Its imperfect zoom and focus suit that carefree, nostalgic feeling.Surveillance footage, TV zoom and wide lenses, all shot by Brett Bushell, add a Truman Show surrealism - the overbearing pressure from an outside world demanding more from you, again and again. The film is rooted in Jungian psychology and the idea of the “shadow.” When did you first encounter that concept, and why did it resonate with you?There’s a side to all of us that we don’t always want to look at. The parts of ourselves we repress, reject or don’t recognise as being us. In Jungian psychology, this is often referred to as our shadow.For me, it showed up most clearly in work or romantic relationships that weren’t right for me: a quick temper; a condescending edge. I would sometimes find myself acting out behaviours I used to see in my mum growing up, behaviours I was critical of. So why, when I was older, was I repeating this? I would ask myself. We absorb our environments and inherit behaviours and attitudes. It’s not until you accept you are sometimes behaving in ways you don’t like in others that you can correct those behaviours - or at least soften them. That’s where the shadow becomes important. It isn’t simply the “bad” part of ourselves; it’s the part we haven’t fully acknowledged or taken responsibility for. Sometimes what we most want to reject is what's asking to be understood. In Darkest Hours, I face mine directly. She’s a part of me I can’t simply erase, because if I were to do so completely, I would probably risk becoming somebody I don’t even recognise. What princess in Disney doesn’t have an imperfect companion to help her survive?What parts of yourself did you have to confront while making Hotel 555?Darkest Hours was the rawest of the tracks - confronting what triggers those unconscious, often destructive, habits. Merry Go Round went through many rewrites, partially because I didn’t want it to just complain about the 9-5 grind that made me unhappy at the time. This was my realisation that I was ready to make the jump and dive into the freelance world to do what I love most. Desire is about honesty with your own feelings, even when they're just lust, even when it's not someone you'd choose long-term. Every track carries that same bittersweet honesty.The film touches on performative glamour; how has that affected your relationships with people around you and your perception of yourself?For The Love is about those “friends” who only show up at certain parties, the smiles that only appear when you’re associated with certain people. I've been part of that illusion myself - trying to connect with people I didn't really understand or vibe with, and feeling out of place where I didn’t quite belong. This track is where I let it all go: where passion must come first.You co-directed the film and shot it entirely in Tokyo, while being based in London. What does each city represent within your creative world?That’s right. The short film plans were 90% built remotely with Calvin Ma and Brett Bushell - script, shot list, scheduling.London is home, for sure, but Japan, especially Yokohama and Tokyo, carries a childhood nostalgia. Going back tests my language and pulls me into a completely different rhythm. It’s almost an interesting social experiment when you put yourself in different environments. Stepping outside what you know is where creativity sparks. How did you translate the music into rooms, characters and visual symbols without simply illustrating the lyrics?Each track had its own visual image: Desire - hotel room; Dreamscape - Okinawa; Darkest Hours - a shadow; Merry Go Round - the metro; For The Love - a party. The challenge was to find a narrative thread between them. I was looking to create a stylised space that was slightly surreal, a little trippy, like in some of Gaspar Noé’s movies.Were there any scenes or ideas in the film that changed meaning once you saw them on screen?Saïna’s character in the bar scene shifted how I saw the characters. She's awkward at a cool party, sits alone with a cigarette, confined to her own thoughts. Naïve and vulnerable, she wonders if the room likes her, rather than whether she likes the room. They’re simply not her people!In contrast, her shadow fits right in with the crowd with her enticing, effortless charm. I intended Saïna to be exactly me but, after stepping back from planning and shooting, I realise I can be somewhere between the two. I suppose one of the things I like about acting in my own films - that freedom to drift between different versions of yourself and your character.Now that you have stepped out of the hotel and into the light, where does Saïna go next?I’m already plotting what’s next, but the general theme for Part 3 will be rebirth. Like a game or sequel, there’ll be easter eggs that stitch all 3 short films together. The first was screened on a projector in a small bar, the second in a small cinema, and I know I’ll be going even bigger for round 3. Already itching with excitement!Through Hotel 555, Saïna turns a close look at her own habits, relationships and desires into a story that reaches across music and film. That honesty extends to how she approaches her career, choosing where to put her energy and who to bring into her creative world. With the final chapter of her trilogy set to explore rebirth, she is already imagining how to take that story further. Follow Saïna for more on Hotel 555 and what comes next.

Words by Passion DEEZ If the music you want to hear isn’t getting played, throw the party yourself! That was the starting point for HUNNA, the Rotterdam platform that has been making room for underground hip-hop and trap since 2018. What began with friends putting together an idea in a bedroom has grown into a collective, a soundsystem and a community with an ear for what comes next. Along the way, they’ve hosted early shows for local artists, released their own edits and taken on a sold-out Rolling Loud afterparty.With another Amsterdam Dance Event edition approaching, HUNNA are connecting with Los Angeles collective Trap Rave while continuing to give opportunities to people from their own dancefloor. We caught up with Lewis and Nadim to talk about Rotterdam, hearing your favourite tracks through big speakers and what it takes to keep an independent party going. Get familiar below.For those getting familiar, who is behind HUNNA, and what brought you together?Lewis: I’m the founder of HUNNA. I started HUNNA in 2018 together with two friends, Boris and Nahom. At the time, it was simply a club night where we wanted to create space for a specific side of hip-hop that we loved but couldn’t really experience anywhere else in the city. We wanted to bring a new sound to Rotterdam and create a place for music and artists that we felt weren’t being heard enough.Nadim, Zeus and Guap became part of HUNNA pretty early on. They were the first DJs I reached out to because I felt like they shared the same taste, energy and interests we had with HUNNA. Selim, another DJ from Rotterdam, was also part of the team in those early days shoutout to him as well, haha. Mas came in on the visual side as our graphic designer, his work became a huge part of HUNNA’s identity. Everyone had their own strengths and interests and I wanted to create more space to explore those and develop ourselves through HUNNA as well. It became less about everyone just having one specific role and more about giving everyone the opportunity to grow into different sides of what we were building together. Around 2023, that really started to take shape and we began moving much more as a collective, with everyone bringing their own ideas, skills and perspective to HUNNA. I think that’s really what HUNNA has grown into not just a group of DJs or people putting on parties, but a collective where everyone brings something different to the table. That’s still how we operate today.Nadim: The team changed along the way. The other two co-founders eventually went on to do other things, and over time I became more involved in running HUNNA alongside Lewis. Today, Lewis and I are probably the main driving forces when it comes to keeping things moving day to day, while everyone in the wider team contributes from their own role and expertise. There’s a lot we work on together.What brought us together was that underground hip-hop and trap sound. We were enjoying it ourselves and thought it deserved a platform in Rotterdam.Lewis: It’s always been about spotting new things: new sounds, new artists and new DJs. We’re always looking for something fresh.Take us back to that first party. What was missing in Rotterdam’s nightlife?Lewis: Boris and I were really into a trap at the time. We went to a lot of parties together, but we rarely heard the music we actually loved being played. At some point we just thought: if nobody’s really doing it, why don’t we throw the kind of party we would want to go to ourselves?Around that time, we got an opportunity at WORM to help with some of their events. After working with them for a while, they asked if we’d be interested in creating something of our own. That gave us the opportunity to turn the idea into something real. I remember going over to Mas’ place, we basically sat in his bedroom putting the whole thing together the idea, the feeling, what we wanted it to look like. That’s really where the first version of HUNNA started taking shape.It came from something very simple: we felt like a certain sound and energy were missing in Rotterdam, so instead of waiting for someone else to create that space, we decided to create it ourselves.Nadim: There had been a lot of hip-hop parties in Rotterdam, but some had died down. Then this new wave of hip-hop came up, and we felt it wasn’t getting the attention it deserved.Lewis: A lot of the other parties focused on the mainstream hip-hop sound. We wanted to play things you weren’t hearing at club nights that much.Where does the name HUNNA come from?Lewis: We were already listening to artists like Chief Keef and that whole Chicago drill era before HUNNA started. For us, that period represented a shift in hip-hop a raw energy and sound that felt completely different from what we were hearing at most parties in Rotterdam.That energy was a big part of what we wanted to showcase with HUNNA. Not just Chicago drill, but that whole new generation of hip-hop. So when we started thinking about a name, it naturally came from that world. You would hear “three hunna” around Chief Keef and that era, eventually we landed on HUNNA. Over time, the name took on a meaning of its own for us too: staying true to your taste and what you believe in.Nadim: There’s also the slang term in the Netherlands, responding to someone with “honderd” to say you understand. That was part of the idea too.You describe HUNNA as a new generation of sound. What does that sound like today?Lewis: The sound of HUNNA keeps moving. Right now, there’s an interesting crossover happening between trap and electronic music, and that’s where we’re at today. At the same time, we’re opening up the sound more and creating something that connects with a wider crowd.Nadim: Trap is still a big part of hip-hop. A lot of the newer artists have that punkish, rockstar energy. The guys we’re working with, Trap Rave, do afterparties in LA for artists coming out of that world.We’re also trying to make the party accessible to people who just want to dance. We combine the more iconic hip-hop sounds with newer music and a more eclectic approach. We want people to enjoy themselves and dance while still hearing that new generation of hip-hop.You’ve given early opportunities to artists such as ADF Samski and Elijah Waters. What makes you want to book someone before they have a wider audience?Lewis: We look for artists who stay true to what they believe in, have their own sound. It’s not always about how big someone is, but about the potential, authenticity and energy we see in them. Nadim: It’s also about being in touch with what’s new and what we enjoy. Both of those artists are from Rotterdam. When we see that potential, it motivates us to give someone a platform where they might have one of their first shows. Samski’s first real live show in Rotterdam was at HUNNA.Lewis: And we have that same approach with DJs.Nadim: We want to give people opportunities early. A lot of it comes from being connected to the people around us and hearing what they’re doing.Are there any performances from those early years that really stick with you?Nadim: The ADF Samski show was iconic. He was just coming up and he arrived with no DJ and no USB stick. Me and Guap, one of the guys from our team, ended up playing his set through an aux cord. The songs were in his Notes app, so we connected his phone to the decks and played it like that.The event went really well. We were so locked in and having so much fun that it felt like this was going to last for years.Lewis: That was our one-year anniversary too. It was a really fun night, our good friend Bao G joined us as a guest DJ, which made it even more special.You’ve also released an edit pack. What made you want to put music out together?Lewis: We’re always trying to expand what we do with HUNNA. We all do things with music outside HUNNA, we wanted to bring that into HUNNA and release something together. We wanted to show people that we could make music from our own perspective.Nadim: What we enjoy about a good edit is taking a song you wouldn’t usually play as a DJ, whether that’s because of the BPM or the way it sounds, and making it work for you. We took three songs and made them more suitable for our sets.Alongside being a party, we’re a DJ collective and a soundsystem. We use those edits ourselves. They’re our perspective on club music.Who makes up HUNNA Soundsystem, and how does it work?Lewis: We started with Nadim, Luca, Guap and me on the mic. It’s changed a little since then. Right now, it’s mostly Nadim and me, but we switch things around with DJs who share the same ideas. Qu!nna, a DJ and really good friend of ours, also steps in a lot and has become a familiar part of the Soundsystem.Nadim: We have people on the bench! We reach out to different people when gigs come in. Sometimes we invite a DJ who knows and loves trap but doesn’t usually get to play it. That gives them the opportunity to play a trap set with us.It also lets us make the soundsystem fit the gig we’re doing. It’s an open team, but the core is Lewis and me.The Rolling Loud afterparty was a big moment for HUNNA. How did that come together?Lewis: When I heard Rolling Loud was coming to Rotterdam, I started thinking about how HUNNA could be part of it. We came up with the idea of hosting an official afterparty and wanted to collaborate with an organisation that shared the same energy and connection to the culture. We had always liked what Pretty Girls Like Trap Music were doing, so joining forces with them felt like a natural fit. At the same time, me and Nahom were responsible for the DJ programming for the festival itself. It was a big moment for us being involved both in the festival and through HUNNA with the official afterparty. It took a lot from the whole team to pull everything together, but it was a really special opportunity.Nadim: If you’re from Rotterdam and organise events, having a party at Maassilo is a bucket-list thing. Selling it out was huge for us. It was our biggest event yet.What did taking on a production of that size teach you?Nadim: We went from events of around 500 people to 3,000 at Maassilo. We’d never run a production that big, and we still did it independently. Rolling Loud supported us with promotion, but we didn’t receive money from them to organise the party. The financial risk was on us and Pretty Girls Like Trap Music.We were confident enough to go for it, and we learned so much about promoting and producing an event at that scale, dealing with different artists, live performances and DJs.It was also a catalyst for exploring other sounds that still connect to hip-hop. We had a second area with a more eclectic sound, including Jarreau Vandal and FS Green, and that worked really well. We kept doing that whenever there was room for it. We still use what we learned from that event today.You’ve worked with brands, venues and other collectives. Which collaborations have meant the most to you?Lewis: Last year we worked with New Balance and JD, which was our first own activation with a big brand, so I’m really proud of that one. We also work a lot with The O, another collective from Rotterdam. Those collaborations are always really dope because there’s a natural connection between us. And now working with Trap Rave from LA is exciting because it connects HUNNA to a whole new world outside of Rotterdam.Nadim: Trap Rave feels like a mirror image of HUNNA, but from LA. Working together feels natural.We’re also proud of Royal Rumble, our yearly King’s Night party with other partners. Last year we did it at Annabel for the first time. It wasn’t sold out, but it did really well, and we were proud of the lineup.Lewis: Royal Rumble feels like an extension of what we’re doing with HUNNA. We created it together with Sense and Feeble, bringing our different worlds together to build something that represents the wider hip-hop community.What is the hardest part of keeping an independent party going that people on the dancefloor don’t see?Lewis: You really have to push yourself because you’re doing it yourself. Sometimes you don’t immediately see what comes out of it and financially there isn’t always much there. You have to do it from a place of passion. The love of the music keeps me going, but also seeing what we’ve built over the years and the moments/memories we’ve created. It’s basically that same drive I have for my own music: that need to create, build something I believe in and keep pushing it forward.Nadim: This isn’t something we make a lot of money from. Every now and then we get a little bag, but it’s always been about having a creative outlet and giving people something we would want to enjoy ourselves.We’ve noticed that underground hip-hop and trap have become more of a niche again, especially in how many people are willing to come to events and concerts. We’ve had tougher times, but we kept our heads up. Staying focused on that sound is also what put us in a position to do the Rolling Loud afterparty. It made sense because we’d already been doing the work.Last year’s ADE party sold out. What stood out about that edition?Nadim: We did it with Global Warning, and it was so much fun. I think the people who came really got what they came for. It was a proper trap party, and we still sold it out. We also brought in some of that wider club sound to connect with the Amsterdam Dance Event setting.It’s one of the collaborations we’re really proud of. Shots Fired was behind Global Warning, and he’s one of our good friends and partners. He really pushes the newer trap sound, so it makes sense to bring him back for this year’s lineup too.This year you’re linking with Trap Rave. What do you want the lineup to say about HUNNA now?Lewis: We’ve brought everything we stand for into it. There are upcoming DJs, people from Trap Rave and names people already know.Nadim: A lot of the lineup comes from the collectives themselves, with HUNNA Soundsystem and Clover and Sakura from Trap Rave.We also wanted to give someone who has been coming to our parties for years her first ADE booking. She knows what we stand for and understands the music we’re trying to share with our audience. We have a lot of faith in her talent.Lewis: She also started her own party, Get Out, in Utrecht, where we’ve played before. It makes sense to give that opportunity back to her too.Nadim: Then there’s DJ iPad Kid 2001. He’s a serious DJ, but he brings a sense of humour to his sets with sound bites and other funny moments, while still having great song selection. We really enjoy that, and he’s part of our community as well. There’s also a special guest still to be confirmed.You’re also doing a pre-party before the club night. What can people expect?Nadim: We’re working with a fragrance store on a Wednesday pre-party. People can come and hang out, grab a drink and vibe with us before we go into the night programme.Lewis: It’s free. You can just pull up.Nadim: If it’s full, you might have to wait outside, but everyone is welcome to come by.Looking beyond ADE, where do you want to take HUNNA?Lewis: We’d love to explore more international collaborations and see what can grow from connecting HUNNA with different scenes outside of Rotterdam. At the same time, the core stays the same: giving the new generation a platform to express themselves through their own sounds and ideas.Nadim: We want to expand the ways we can offer that platform. We’re building our social media into somewhere we can share music, talk about artists and interact with our audience more, alongside promoting events.We’re also interested in community events, DJ lessons and marketplaces where upcoming Rotterdam brands and people we support can show their work. We’re figuring out how to keep giving space to the music, DJs and artists we really fuck with as clubbing changes.Lewis: We’re interested in working with cultural spaces where we can connect music with film, storytelling and other creative disciplines.Nadim: We want to broaden our hip-hop horizons. That could mean curating films or creating nights where people can enjoy different kinds of art and music. We want to build more of a communal hub in Rotterdam. We care a lot about the city and think it has so much more to offer than people sometimes realise.Lewis: Basically, expand the HUNNA world!For someone coming to their first HUNNA night this ADE, what do you want them to leave having experienced?Lewis: Hopefully people leave HUNNA having discovered something new an artist, a DJ, a sound or even a community they didn’t know before. We want people to feel connected to what’s happening and feel like they’re part of it, rather than just watching from the outside. That sense of discovery and belonging is a big part of what HUNNA is about.Nadim: If you already love hip-hop and trap, I want you to leave thinking, “I always listen to that song, but I’ve never heard it in the club.” That’s why I started DJing. I wanted to play music I really enjoyed, that I never heard in clubs, and blast it over some big-ass speakers.If you listen to trap, expect a lot of your playlist to get played at HUNNA. I hope you leave satisfied, having heard the songs you wanted to hear.From a bedroom idea to an international link-up, HUNNA are still following the same instinct: give the music they love somewhere to live and bring their people with them. Catch them during Amsterdam Dance Event as they connect with Trap Rave for another night of new discoveries and familiar tracks through big speakers. Keep an eye on HUNNA’s channels for the full event details. 

Words by Passion DEEZ Before Kofi Stone was taking his music across Europe, he was recording into a headset on his mum’s old computer and making his little sister listen to the results. Raised between East London and Birmingham, the rapper found his voice through family, faith and artists who showed him there was room in hip-hop to be himself. Those foundations still run through his music today, where personal stories make space for other people to open up too.With ‘The Last Flower to Bloom’, Kofi is taking a moment to appreciate how far he has come. The video for “No Way” brings different versions of himself together to celebrate the journey, rented limo included. But as the crowds grow and the music travels further, he is also figuring out what success means when the goalposts keep moving. We caught up with Kofi to talk Birmingham’s underdog spirit, finding confidence through clothes, collaborations built on friendship and the conversations after his shows that remind him why he does this. Get familiar.For those getting familiar, who is Kofi Stone, and what would you like someone to understand about you before pressing play?Kofi Stone is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. I make soulful, introspective hip-hop. I’m someone who loves to speak the truth, loves to tell it like it is, and I believe I’m a voice for the voiceless.You grew up between East London and Birmingham. What did each place give you, and where do we hear those parts of your upbringing in your music?The first few years of my life were in East London. I feel like East London has a gritty side to it, and I embodied that. There’s a raw, uncut side to how I approach things, and that’s what I took from East London specifically.Birmingham is similar. It has a very raw edge to it, but I also feel like it’s quite deprived in terms of the arts. When I was growing up, there weren’t a huge amount of opportunities. There was this fighting spirit, this underdog spirit, especially growing up there and almost trying to come back to London to make it.I wouldn’t say I had a chip on my shoulder, but I had a point to prove. There was a hunger that I think you can only understand being a Brummie and being outside the capital. I feel like I embodied that, and it’s in my music.Family was also a big part of my upbringing, and that’s prevalent in my music. I’d say the main themes are love, faith and family. Those have been the most pivotal things in my life.Your dad introduced you to blues, soul and hip-hop, and your mum had her own collection. What do you remember about those early musical moments?I remember a lot about the different sounds, where I was when I heard them and the emotions running through me as a young child. I think it was all building towards me wanting to create my own music.My dad used to play a lot of Nina Simone. We used to take a lot of car journeys from Birmingham to London, and he’d play different music on those journeys. Nina Simone, Nat King Cole, George Benson. He also played a lot of hip-hop: Nas, 50 Cent, G-Unit. Joe, too, on the R&B side. Those are the names I remember from my dad.My mum’s collection was very different. It was more gospel, more R&B and even some pop. I remember Gabrielle. There was loads and loads of music. I was exposed to so much growing up.Your grandfather was a poet. Did you get to read his work, and did it influence your own writing?There are a few poems of his that I’ve read, and that was a big part of why I started writing, actually. I think he inspired me to start.You started recording with a headset on your mum’s old computer. What did that setup look like, and who was hearing those first tracks?I remember that computer. It was my mum’s old computer, and she let me have it. I don’t even know where I got hold of the mic. It was headphones with a telecommunications microphone. I’d plug that in and literally use Sound Recorder on Windows.My little sister was around at the time. I’d make a track, then go and bother her and show her what I’d done. My cousins were around too, so they were aware of me making music when I first started.I was really young, around 11 or 12. I was really keen as a young boy.As you developed your writing, what helped you find your own voice?I think I owe that to a lot of different artists. There was a crop of artists I looked at who were a little bit different in how they presented themselves. I wouldn’t say gangster rap was on its way out, but there was this new crop: your Lupe Fiascos, your Kanye Wests, even Pharrell. They were individuals being themselves in that space.I think I subconsciously took that on board, even in the way I dressed. I understood who I was pretty early. I’d wear Vans and more streetwear stuff. We’re talking mid-2000s, and I’d probably be one of the only ones in my school doing that.The way I dressed helped me find my voice in music. It was almost like, okay, you wear what you want, these are the clothes you like, and this is who you are. You’ve also got to make music that is true to you. What do you want to say?It became one and the same. I feel like that inspired me to live my truth on record.The video for “No Way” brings together a younger version of you, who you are today and an older version of yourself. What sparked that idea?Me and the director were going back and forth with ideas, and I came up with the idea of a younger me and it being a celebration of the journey so far. Those were the foundations, and he took it to another level.Going into this era, I wanted to document this time and celebrate it, so that would be evident looking back. I wanted it to be a coming-of-age thing, seeing how far you’ve come and celebrating the journey.That’s why there’s a limo in there. It’s not something I would normally do. I was struggling with how it would come across at first, if I’m honest. But I felt like, if it was done right, the message would be conveyed.There are little details in there. You can see that it’s a rented limo. It’s almost like you’ve arrived, you’ve got there, but you’re not quite there. You’re celebrating, but you’re still humble. You’re still real. You’re just taking a moment to celebrate. That’s the feeling I wanted in that visual.If those three versions of you could sit down together, what would they make of where you are now?I think the younger me was a little bit more delusional. I think he thought he’d have a mansion at this point, possibly. He used to watch MTV Base and MTV Cribs and think it was easily acquirable.But I definitely think he’d be taken aback by where we are and the things we’re doing: the shows, the amount of support we’ve garnered and all the different little details that are in place now as an artist.Hopefully, the older me has done all that I set out to do. They’d be watching themselves on a journey they’ve already lived. But if it was the older me looking over, I think they’d be proud. They’d say, “This is all that I’d love to be doing,” and it’s been done the right way.What does The Last Flower to Bloom mean to you as a title, and has your understanding of it changed since making the project?To me, it means arriving at your destination, where you set out to go, and everything coming to fruition. In a nutshell, that’s what it means.It hasn’t changed completely, but the goalposts always move. You might achieve a set of things, and that might be what you set out to do. Then you do it, and there’s more you might want to do.What I’ve learned is that there almost is no end to it. Fulfilment is more internal. It’s more of a self-realisation thing than what you can acquire in accolades, or the things the industry or the world deems as success.It’s always changing, and there are different things you might require on your journey to be successful. It’s not just accolades.The project brings together artists including Wiki, Mahalia, Jaz Karis, Children of Zeus, Ady Suleiman and D Double E. How did those collaborations come together?It was nice to work with them because I have a lot of respect for each and every one of them. Some were sessions, and some were sent over.With Wiki, we’d been trying to meet for a while, but we weren’t able to. I’ve loved him for a minute. He’s great, and he shared something that was really dear to him. He really wore his heart on his sleeve on that verse.Mahalia came to the studio. She’s a friend of mine, and we had a great conversation. It was very natural, just like two friends hanging out, and it came together. It almost felt like we weren’t working.Ady was very similar because that’s my bro. We were having a conversation about music and not knowing where to go. He was saying he wanted to do some cool stuff, and I think he felt a bit low that day. I said, “You know what? Let’s just make some music.”In that moment, I made the verses for “Baby Love”. We got into the studio the next day, he wrote his chorus, and that was that. They all came from real moments, which was beautiful.D Double E was unexpected. It was more like, we’ll reach out; he’s a legend, we’d love for it to happen. We didn’t expect too much. Loved him if he did, loved him if he didn’t. Then he hit us back and said, “Yeah, I love it.” He gave us his verse, and it was amazing.There’s also Children of Zeus on there. We did two versions of the song. Jaz Karis was quite recent. I’ve loved her for a minute, and she did great. Everyone did amazing, man. I’m really grateful to have them all on there.Soul runs through your music, alongside hip-hop and jazz. What do you listen for in production, and how do you know when you can tell a story on it?There’s always something that evokes an emotion, that triggers a certain time or a moment in life that’s happened, or helps me find the emotion I’m feeling. I feel like I’m a book of different emotions. That’s one way to describe it.Music has the power to evoke those different emotions. When I hear a certain sound, it helps me tap into that. It might be happy or sad. Depending on how I’m feeling at that particular moment, it can really connect.When I’m feeling a certain way, I look for a certain type of production and hope I can get my thoughts and feelings out. It’s something I can’t really describe, but it’s very much about the musicality. If I’m feeling sad, there’s a certain kind of musicality I look for. If I’m feeling happy or super gassed, there’s a sort of melody I look for. It depends on how I’m feeling.What place does faith have in your life, and how does it enter your writing?Faith is a big part of my music. I wanted to cover it most on my last project, A Man After God’s Own Heart. I try to have it as a running theme because it’s part of me. It’s my upbringing, it’s something I practise, and it’s almost like my cornerstone. Christ being my cornerstone, it’s somewhere I can go when I’m lost, when I don’t know where to go or when I need help.I can draw inspiration from my faith. There’s a lot of knowledge in the Bible, in different parables and things like that. It’s a running theme, and something I feel almost obliged to give my take on as a man of faith in the music industry.I try to be as truthful to myself as I can in the music. If I excluded that, I’d be short-changing people and not being a man of my word. I think it’s important to live your truth, so it’s something I make an effort to have in the music.Your music makes space for vulnerability. Growing up, who gave you the room to be open about how you felt?That’s a really good question. I’ve never thought about who directly gave me that. Growing up, my mum gave me a lot of space to be me, to voice my opinions and my feelings. I think that would have subconsciously had an effect on me and helped me become the man I am today.I grew up in the house with my mum and my sister, so it was a house of women. I think that had an effect on me as a man, learning about that side of things, the softer side. I might have embodied that in some way.Not all the time, but I feel women can be better at being vulnerable, while society says men shouldn’t be. I put that into my music and saw it as a superpower, essentially. There’s strength in vulnerability. I’d say my mum allowed me to be that.There’s also a sense of care in your music: giving people space to be vulnerable and helping them through it. Does that continue in your relationship with listeners?I try to provide that in my music and in person as well. I try to open my doors to individuals. At every show, I speak to every individual who’s there who wants to speak.I’ve had conversations with young men, and some of the stories I’ve heard have been very deep. Some people need comfort. On some of the tours I’ve done, it’s been made evident what my role is as a rapper in this game.Because I’ve opened the floodgates for vulnerability, there are individuals seeking to be nurtured. It puts things into perspective for me. It realigns my purpose and reminds me of my purpose.Your music has taken you across the UK and Europe, with Australia and New Zealand still to come. What has surprised you most about the people and places you’re connecting with?This last tour was a bit surreal. Being a kid from Birmingham, it’s mind-blowing to be able to do pretty busy shows in places like Hamburg and Cologne. Just people turning up, if I’m being honest, is mind-blowing. Every time, I’m taken aback.I think it’s because of the way we’ve built Kofi Stone through an independent route, self-funded. There’s only so much you can do without a machine. The fact that it’s resonating with people in these places, without being forced upon them, is something I first of all owe to God. I can’t say it’s me.I’m always taken aback by it. It’s like, how is this happening? I’m just very grateful.From those first recordings on his mum’s computer to conversations with listeners after shows across Europe, Kofi Stone has kept the people around him close to the music. Family, faith and the freedom to say how he feels continue to guide him, even as his idea of success changes. Spend some time with The Last Flower to Bloom and get familiar with an artist who puts that honesty into every part of the journey.

Interview by Passion Dzenga and Liesje VerhaveLaunching in 2021, Echobox has been forging a path for community radio by showcasing the diverse characters and concepts that surround their station. In this feature, we will be looking into one of the broadcasts that you can tune into, so get locked in and don’t touch that dial. Soft Break moves like a restless signal through contemporary club culture, a Rotterdam-rooted DJ whose sets feel less like genre exercises and more like living narratives. Pulling from jungle, dubstep, and grime, she slides between whispered melody and percussive pressure, from footwork’s controlled chaos to basslines that physically reshape a room. It’s a sound that’s already travelled far: from underground sanctuaries to main stages and institutions, touching spaces like Dekmantel, De School, CTM, RAUM, Garage Noord, and beyond. Always with the same forward-leaning intent.But what makes Soft Break especially vital in 2026 isn’t only where she plays. It’s what she builds. As a driving force behind AMPFEMININE, she’s helped expand the ecosystem for femme-identifying talent through bookings, mixes, mentorship, and hands-on education. At the same time, her Echobox residency has become a kind of sonic laboratory: a place to test ideas the club doesn’t always allow, to take bigger risks, and to treat electronic music as a tool for placemaking. Designing worlds through rhythm, texture, and pacing.In this conversation, we get into the freedom of radio, the discipline of the one-hour format, why skits and quiet moments still matter, and how mentoring brought her back to the core excitement of DJing. We also look forward: toward a three-month Suriname residency that will merge her sound with her visual practice and research into musical migration, diaspora, and the way traditional forms mutate in the laptop age.You have a radio show on Echobox now, and before that you played a few sets on other stations. What has the Echobox residency been like, and what does it bring you?This is really the first time I have had my own show. I have done a few guest sets with my collective, but Echobox made sense for me because there are so many tunes I don’t always dare to play in a club. I feel like I play what I want, but some tracks are just too crazy for a dancefloor context. Radio is another way to explore music and go deeper, and because there’s no direct audience in front of you, you don’t have that pressure of “does this make people move?” It’s more like being in your own living room, listening to music on good speakers.Was it intimidating at first, being on radio?Yeah, at the beginning I was nervous talking on radio because you don’t see who’s listening. Unless people say something in the chat, it feels like you’re talking to yourself, but also not. For my first show I wrote a full outline, minute-by-minute: what I’d say, what track would play when. But it felt overwhelming and took away the experiment. So after the first show, I stopped scripting.How has it evolved since then?I still plan my tracks and I plan my shows. I’ve also done specials, like a 100 BPM special, and my last one was a skit special. But I don’t plan what I’m going to say anymore. Maybe I’ll try again one day now that I’m more comfortable, but that very refined, polished approach doesn’t really reflect me.Your sets often lean bass-driven and rhythm-heavy, but you also have a strong experimental ear. What draws you to those intense, percussive styles?I love a lot of genres, but bass is home for me. I’ve always listened to bass music. And I also love experimental sounds. I’ve always listened to sounds that feel slightly off center), crazy textures, unexpected rhythms, especially combined with dreamy vocals, things you don’t always hear in a club. With radio, you can really explore that because you don’t have to make anyone dance. You can just follow the sound.Does radio give you room to take risks you wouldn’t take in a club?Definitely. I take more risks on the radio because there’s no direct audience response. Like, I might include skits in my club sets sometimes, but I couldn’t do an entire hour of skits in a club. Radio lets you build different kinds of storytelling: voices only, strange interludes, quieter moments.What inspired the skit special?Literally nostalgia. I was listening to classic skits, like the Outkast ones, and I thought, wait… where did all the skits go? There are still skits now, but they’re not as dominant as they used to be, where every album had two or three skits, an intro, an interlude, an outro. I missed that.Do you think streaming and playlist culture killed skits?Yeah, it doesn’t really accommodate them. And it’s probably also an industry thing like why put out a 30-second skit if it doesn’t “earn” the same way. But skits were also a soft break. A moment of quiet between heavier parts.Do you think club culture needs more of those “breaks” too?Yes. It doesn’t have to be 100% intensity all the time. Those little breaks make the impact stronger, it's like a pause to reset your ears.Does the one-hour format change how you build your Echobox shows compared to a club set?It depends. In a club set, I read the room. If I have two hours, my build-up might be half an hour. I’ll start at 130 depending on the slot and the context. With radio, sometimes I don’t go above 140, sometimes I start at 160. I can commit to one specific sound and stay there. Radio is complete creative freedom. Every month I can do whatever I want.Do you like one-hour sets in general?I actually do. I know a lot of DJs don’t, but I like how quickly you can change the feeling. When I first started DJing, I’d play 40+ tracks in an hour because I was so excited. I wanted to play everything. That changed over time because digging takes a lot of work if you mostly want to play with recent tracks and I learned some songs need time; they need a moment. Now I appreciate letting tracks breathe. You’re part of a collective, AMPFEMININE, but your Echobox show is solo. What’s the difference for you?The Echobox show is really for me. At first, I had an idea to invite visual artists. I’m a graphic designer and explore what they listen to while they work, and how visual work could translate into sound. But I realised I also needed moments for myself and my sound. I’ve only had a few guests when I was away, but mostly I want to continue it solo for now.What’s the concept behind the collective’s show?It’s about collaboration, how collaborations come about, the struggles and the beauty of working together. It’s not only about music industry collaborations either. Last year we did a monthly one-hour show, but it felt too short because we wanted to interview a guest and also play back-to-back. So this year it’ll be two hours, every two months, so we can actually go deeper.You also organised a panel talk around staying in music while becoming a parent. Why was that important?It’s something we’ve wanted to discuss for a long time. Nightlife and aging makes you reflect, what happens if you want to become a parent? But also, what if prioritizing a career in nightlife is the path that feels most authentic right now, even if it means not becoming a parent? How do you continue? The biggest takeaway is simple: it takes a village. You need a healthy support system to keep going with the same energy. And online, it can look effortless when people are always out, always active, but it’s not easy, and not everyone has supportive parents or family. The collective also runs DJ education. What gap were you trying to fill?We kept getting asked to do one-hour or two-hour workshops. And honestly, you’re not starting a DJ journey from one hour. So we applied for funding and built a longer course where people can actually learn and experiment. One hour is still better than nothing, but we wanted something real and extensive.What was important about how you structured it?Accessibility. A lot of DJ classes are expensive. Ours was affordable and it was a full package, an eight-week course, press photos, write a unique bio, make your own rider and record a radio set. It wasn’t just “learn to DJ so you can become famous.” It was about discovering music, discovering your sound, learning how genres can connect.What does it feel like seeing people grow through the program?It’s amazing. You see someone in week one who can’t do anything yet, and then later they’re closing a big venue. It’s beautiful to watch. One of the mentees, Meena,  just closed Export in Rotterdam.What are the long-term goals?Structural funding and a home base. A place where people can always come to practice. Because if you have to rent space to practice, it becomes less accessible again.Has teaching changed what you personally get from DJing?Honestly, it helped me regain my love for DJing. At some point, I felt like I had to choose between graphic design and music because I was working nonstop, seven days a week, morning to midnight. It wasn’t sustainable. And DJing is even less stable financially than design. So I lost that original reason I started. But mentoring brought it back, and seeing the excitement, the obsession with digging, experimenting, and discovering. That’s the core. It reminded me it should be for you.You work across audio and visual worlds. Do you see a future where those practices merge?Yes, definitely. I actually have exciting news: in September, I’m going to Suriname for a three-month residency. The project is about Surinamese music migrating to the Netherlands and how the diaspora is now playing that music loudly and proudly in the mainstream, while there was a time it wasn’t accepted. I’m interested in how those worlds collide, like mixing that traditional music with techno, or newer club forms. I don’t know the final form yet, but it might become a book or a short film.Does Suriname show up in your DJ identity already?Not directly, but I’m Surinamese, so of course - maybe in how I work with rhythm - changing tempo, switching patterns. It’s hard to explain what I’m doing sometimes. But yes, you could say it’s present in the polyrhythms and the way the bass and groove move, even if the references aren’t explicit.What does this trip represent for you personally?It’s spiritual. I don’t speak the language. I’ve only been back once. My grandparents came to the Netherlands in the 60s, and a lot of my family was born here, so there’s already a gap in connection. Music became my way of connecting without needing words. But now I also want to understand the rituals behind it, the stories, the deeper context.Traditional music forms being made on laptops now, how does that interest you?Because traditionally, some of these forms are made by groups. Live, communal, with multiple people, and now people are making it alone on a laptop with presets. I want to understand what that shift does, and how technology changes culture, sound, and authenticity.Tune in to Echobox, broadcasting from below sea level every week, Wednesday until Saturday. 

Interview by Passion Dzenga and Liesje Verhave | Photography by Sam Vanacker and Lowie van der GrintenThere is something fitting about Stapelgang taking their name from a street. What began as a group of friends from dance school gathering to listen to music, exchange references and talk about the details hidden inside the songs they loved has gradually developed into something much larger: a musical project, creative community and shared language built from years of moving, listening and working alongside one another.Formed around 2018, Stapelgang grew from friendships established through dance, but the group were never interested in remaining within a single discipline. Music, performance, production, theatre, DJing and visual culture all became part of the same creative vocabulary. Even their name has come to reflect that approach. A stapel is a pile or stack: something built by placing one thing on top of another. For Stapelgang, every experience becomes another layer. Knowledge picked up through dance feeds into music; theatre informs the live show; friendship shapes the studio; and the wider community around them continues to influence what the group can become.Now operating as the trio of Gary “Duimalot” Gravenbeek (vocalist), Jeffrey “Jackson” Loewenicht (producer) and Skeyenno “Kiddy” Talany (vocalist), Stapelgang are pushing that philosophy further with their self-titled EP. Developed through intensive writing camps, tiny rooms, ageing laptops and an instinctive creative relationship years in the making, the project captures a group learning how to turn the chemistry of friendship into something more deliberate without losing the spontaneity that made it exciting in the first place.Following the release of their EP, Stapel, we sat down with the group to talk about growing from dancers into musicians, learning to work professionally with your closest friends, making something from very little, building a live world around their music and why the people surrounding Stapelgang remain just as important as the three standing at its centre.You all knew each other through dance before Stapelgang existed. How did that friendship eventually become a musical project?Gary: Stapelgang started around 2018. We were a group of friends and most of us came from the dance academy, so there was already this whole family surrounding what we were doing. We would have nights where we came together, listened to a lot of music, shared music with each other and really talked about how it made us feel and all the different layers within it. I think that was when the depth of what we were doing together, beyond dancing, really started coming into the room. We started investigating what all of this meant to us individually and what it could mean collectively.At that point there were five of us, including Evan “N4VY” Blaaser - Lumen Atlas and Okke “Orka” Pieters. One night we were outside in Amersfoort and took a picture on this little street called Stapelgang. From there it became “gang”. But the idea of a stapel — putting things into a pile — actually ended up describing us really well. Everything we learn from other work, whether that's theatre, acting, performing or dancing, gets put back into the pile. All of that information comes back into Stapelgang.Jeffrey: We were schoolmates, classmates and dance mates, so our relationships had already developed across all these different layers. That made our connection through music stronger too. Some of us were DJing, some were interested in beats and production, and eventually all of those elements started coming together. We developed a language where somebody can say, “Can you make it more like this?” and we know what they mean because we already understand how the other person experiences music.As dancers, you're embodying the music. Now we're making the music. Those things are connected because you're already trained to recognise what you're looking for emotionally.Was there a clear moment when you decided to start making music, or did it simply become another extension of the way you already related to sound?Kiddy: I think it all comes down to loving music. Dance is one aspect of that love, but there is another realm of enjoying music where you're actually making it. For us, those things add to each other. They're different sides of the same coin.Dance was really the first layer. A lot of us were already interested in how music was made, but dance brought us close together and taught us how to enjoy and analyse music together. Eventually the question became: how do we actually make the kind of music that makes us feel this way? Then suddenly we're vocalists, we're making beats and we're all sitting together in this tiny room that's way too hot with way too many people inside it.Gary: I don't even think there was one real starting point. Some of us grew up around music through our parents, and I was already a vocalist before I seriously started dancing. We were all so obsessed with finding music and listening to SoundCloud beats that eventually somebody had to take the next step and start making it themselves.Because we came from dance, we'd also been exposed to a lot of really high-quality music, so our ears were already slightly spoiled. When you begin producing, you immediately know the thing you're making could be better. You're not necessarily ashamed of it, but you understand that you're still in a process.We'd also worked together creatively before Stapelgang properly became a musical project. We choreographed a performance for the National Theater and had to create music for it, which taught us a lot about how we function professionally. Being friends is one thing; actually being responsible for something together is completely different. By the time we started doing proper studio sessions and writing camps, it didn't feel like we were suddenly jumping into something completely new. We already knew quite a lot about how each other worked.Friendship and working relationships don't always translate easily. How have you learned to work professionally together without losing what made you friends in the first place?Jeffrey: It happened quite organically because we know each other's strengths and we're also aware of each other's weaknesses. I know what I can expect from Gary during a certain part of the day, and I know when his concentration is gone and it's time for me to go to Kiddy instead. You learn each other's rhythm in the room.We've also all worked professionally outside of Stapelgang. We've had our own experiences with companies, groups, theatre and other projects, so we understand what it means to work professionally. We didn't need to spend years discovering basic things about one another before we could actually start creating.Kiddy: The years of friendship matter because we've spent years listening to music together and discussing why a sound hits for one person but maybe doesn't hit for somebody else. After enough of those conversations, you almost start living inside each other's brains.When we're working now, sometimes we only need to look at each other. Somebody can use one metaphor and suddenly everybody understands what needs to happen. We've officially been working together on music for a few years, but in another sense we've been developing this sound and this communication for much longer than that.Gary: And the community around us is part of that too. We're the three people stepping forward now saying, “We're Stapelgang,” and that's true, but the people around us have also been involved in this research. They've listened to music with us, talked about music with us and worked on projects with us.When we did the campaign shoot, for example, there were a lot of friends working on it. Everybody already understood each other's expectations. In some ways, we've already done the work because we've spent so many years learning how the people around us operate.Your self-titled EP came out of writing camps rather than a rigid concept. What were you trying to discover when you began making it?Jeffrey: It started with a writing camp in 2025 that was connected to one of my development projects. Part of my research was about producing, and I already knew Gary and Kiddy were making music individually, so I wanted to invite them into the project.We went into it completely blank. Whatever happened, happened. We knew there were certain colours we were attracted to. We wanted things that sounded cinematic, but we also wanted things that felt raw. Once we were in the room, the direction became clearer.That's basically what the EP represents. It's all of our tastes coming together and what happened between us in that room. There wasn't a meeting where we planned exactly what the project needed to sound like. Somebody would hit the first piano chord and we'd suddenly know: okay, it has to go this way.What were those writing camps actually like? Was getting away from your normal environment important to making the project?Gary: We did two writing camps. The first was almost like being at a Center Parcs-type holiday situation, except we genuinely went there to work. I have to give Jeffrey props for that because writing camps can easily turn into partying and messing around, but we really went in. We'd sleep two or three hours and then go straight back into that little room.The first camp was really about making whatever we felt. Megan was there to take photo’s, Joshua was there to cook the food, and there were people around us who were already friends but who were also there because they're professionals at what they do. That distinction was important. You can be friends and still take each other's craft seriously.The second camp was a little harder because we deliberately tried something different and invited other people in. But both experiences taught us about the conditions we need to make the music hit as hard as possible. Even small things matter. There was catering. Things were organised. We weren't living off instant noodles and turning every night into a party. We ate well and we worked.You've spoken about making music in tiny rooms and sometimes working without ideal equipment. Has limitation become part of the Stapelgang process?Kiddy: Technology might genuinely be our biggest enemy sometimes. When it doesn't work the way you want it to, it can slow everything down. But besides that, these are the people I want to work with for the rest of my life.Jeffrey: We've learned how to work with less. Sometimes all we have is a laptop. My laptop is seven years old now, so it definitely has its moments. The sound treatment hasn't always been right either. But we learned how to ask: if we don't have professional equipment, how do we still make this sound professional? How do we get everything possible out of what we have?That taught me something important about these guys and everybody around us. We don't need to have everything. Whatever we do have, we're going to get the most out of it. Of course, sometimes you just want the great studio, the great microphone and the great laptop. But learning without those things means that when they're finally there, we know what to do with them.Kiddy: That's probably where we shine most. We've always been used to creating something out of nothing. That's part of dancing and it's part of our friendship. Those environments can be difficult, but they're also where we thrive.There is a huge amount of energy around Stapelgang. How much of that comes from the fact that you're creating alongside people you genuinely trust?Gary: The energy feels normal to us. Dance definitely has something to do with it, but I think the bigger thing is feeling safe enough to explore and have whatever outlet you need. Those things create a space where you can do whatever you want.We've worked hard, and my motivation now comes from feeling like everything is possible because I'm working with my friends. I'm really close to them. That's something I want other people listening to us to feel as well: find your people and make something together.That's also part of why we want the music to be something everyone can tap into. I want people to hear what we're saying, find their own clique and move. When I'm standing onstage and I look behind me and see Jeffrey and Kiddy, I explode. That's all I ever wanted. I think everybody deserves to find their own version of that, whatever their lane might be.“FC Stapel” feels like one of the clearest examples of that community becoming visible. How did the track and its visual world come together?Kiddy: We were asked to make an anthem for a dance festival “Freedom City” in Utrecht. Raymond “Baba” Ramdihal, who runs the event, is also a friend of ours. That's what made it special: he's doing his thing by organising an event, we're doing ours, and then those worlds can meet.It gave us the opportunity to work with people like Daring “G” Guermonprez, Arif Gusejnov - Sound Masters Academy, Roy “Royal”, Megan Jane Simons, Trak Studios, Sansho Weynschenk, Jochem van der Velden, Gogo Lupin, Lowie van der Grinten - Lowiegraphy, Macy Sarinah, Joshua Bagano - Shempreh and Elsemieke van Essen. It became another stapel, another pile of different people, but everything still came from the source of who we are.The song itself was funny because we spent two or three days making completely different tracks. We were deep in the process, but nobody was saying anything. Eventually I just told everyone, “I'm not going to lie, I'm not feeling this.” Everybody looked at me like, “Yep. Nobody is.” Then we started again. Jeffrey made the new beat in about five minutes.Gary: We asked him what he actually wanted to make and he basically said: just hip-hop. He found a sample, loaded it in and then we separated. He did his part, we did ours, and suddenly it worked.Kiddy: Then Darin G came in and put his magical fingers on it. After all those days trying to force something, FC Stapel basically just happened.Jeffrey: I think we're free spirits when we're inside the studio. Outside the studio, we're hard workers. But in that freedom, that's where the magic comes from. Some of our songs just happen. When we have too many borders and we're told exactly what something has to be, that's more challenging for us. It's something we're learning, but the songs that arrive organically are often the ones closest to my heart.You all come from theatre and dance, so a Stapelgang performance was never likely to be three people simply standing under a spotlight. What did you want people to experience at the EP release show?Jeffrey: We come from theatre, so we don't want people to simply watch us perform. We want them to experience a moment. There is nothing wrong with just having one light and going raw and rapping, but that represents maybe two percent of who we are.We wanted everything to contribute to the experience: VJing, stage design, outfits and lighting. For me, “Blauwe Vinkjes” was probably my favourite song to perform because everything came together during that track. There was so much happening visually. I'm a very visual person, so when the VJing, lighting and everything else clicked at the same time, I could feel that the whole thing was switched on.Gary: The live setup is important to us because we want it to sound genuinely good as well. We've been working with our own sound engineer and using a MIDI controller within the setup. We play with in-ears and monitors, and then we have the visual stage design around us made by Esmeralda van Kekem — the grass mat, pink objects, blocks, circles. We're still developing it, but we want the technical and visual sides to be taken seriously because the performance isn't separate from the music. It's another part of it.You've built this project through instinct, but you're now talking much more deliberately about organisation and the future. What does the next stage of Stapelgang look like?Gary: This upcoming year is going to involve a lot of focus on the organisational side. We're going to continue releasing singles and keep building the online buzz we're creating now through good music, high-quality videos, funny videos and giving people more depth into who we actually are.We're also looking at fundings so we can plan further ahead instead of constantly reacting. Jeffrey is becoming a father, which means we're thinking seriously about how we can work ahead, unload some of his workload and become more efficient as a group.Kiddy and I are also going to be working together on a theatre performance with two other organisations, which means we're going to be around each other for four months. The plan is to make 32 songs during that period.There's already another single almost ready. It was made during the first writing camp and originally could have been part of the EP, but we decided to leave it off and release it separately.The bigger goal is to create enough music and plan enough of the coming year that we have the headspace to properly develop the organisation around Stapelgang. We want to know who we want to work with, which venues we want to be in, who we need to talk to and where the important moments are going to happen. Then we can plan releases around those moments and make sure the people who need to see us actually see us. It's about building Stapelgang into something where we know exactly what we're doing.For all the talk of releases, writing camps, stage design and future plans, the most important part of Stapelgang might still be the simplest: these are friends who learned how to listen to one another.Long before the EP, they were already building its foundations in dance studios, theatre productions, late-night conversations and sessions spent pulling apart the music they loved. That history explains why so much of their process appears instinctive today. A glance can replace a paragraph. A metaphor can redirect an entire session. After days spent forcing a song that doesn't work, somebody can finally admit it and everybody else immediately understands.That trust extends beyond Gary, Jeffrey and Kiddy. Throughout the conversation, they repeatedly return to the people around them: N4VY and Orka in Stapelgang's beginnings; Megan and Joshua at the writing camps; Raymond and the community behind FC Stapel; and collaborators including Daring G, Arif, Royal, Megan Jane, Trak Studios, Sansho, Jochem, Gogo, Lowie, Macy, Shempreh and Els who helped expand the group's ideas into something larger. Stapelgang may now have three people at its front, but they make it clear that the pile was never built by three people alone.That makes the name feel increasingly appropriate. Every discipline, friendship, limitation, performance and collaboration becomes another thing added to the stack. Nothing has to exist independently when it can feed the next idea.And as Stapelgang move from making music in overcrowded rooms towards a more ambitious live show and increasingly deliberate future, they don't seem interested in abandoning the conditions that first made the project work. The equipment can improve. The stages can become bigger. The organisation can become sharper. But the principle remains the same: find the people who understand your language, make the most of what's in front of you, and keep adding to the pile.

Interview by Passion DEEZ Ezra Collective’s new album, Here Because of Hope, feels like a record made by a band looking at where they have come from without losing sight of where they could still go. For bassist TJ Koleoso, that growth is less about becoming better musicians and more about developing the patience, perspective and understanding needed to make music about something as complicated as hope.Having grown up playing alongside his brother and Ezra Collective bandmate Femi Koleoso, TJ has spent more than a decade developing the rhythmic relationship at the centre of the band. Along the way, Ezra Collective have gone from Tomorrow’s Warriors sessions to winning the Mercury Prize, being named BRIT Group of the Year and playing Wembley Arena, all while pushing jazz into spaces where it has historically struggled to receive the same mainstream recognition.With Here Because of Hope, the ambition remains, but so does the humility. Speaking with Patta, TJ discusses learning when not to play, the bass as the glue holding Ezra Collective together, what Gary Crosby taught him about confidence without arrogance, the importance of developing away from the spotlight and why the band still wants to be the most ambitious people in every room they enter.You’ve described Here Because of Hope as a record that reflects Ezra Collective growing up. What does that maturity actually sound like to you?I’m not sure I necessarily meant that we’re going from being children to adults as if we’re better at playing now, or as if to say that we were childish in anything previously. I think the theme of hope is one that requires a more mature understanding of humanity and life.The meaning behind a lot of the songs requires a slightly more mature outlook to really grasp what we’re trying to say. Musically, as we’re growing older, there’s maybe an increased patience with getting to a point of release. We’re waiting a little bit more and trusting the journey of certain songs, and more so the journey of the whole album.Femi has spoken about studying West African and specifically Gambian music while making “Only Love”, and how that informed both the drums and bassline. As the actual bassist in the band, what happens when your drummer walks in with a bassline?I don’t always write the basslines for Ezra songs. In fact, it’s probably rarer for me to write a bassline because we’re all songwriters. Everyone spends time writing their own music and brings it into Ezra.At that point, it’s more a case of me putting my bassist hat on and approaching basslines that might have been written by somebody else, then adapting them in a way that I feel is going to sound like me and therefore sound like Ezra. We’re completely used to it. I never think, “Why have you written a bassline?” I love it when people come in with different ideas.The magic comes when each of us takes responsibility for making those ideas sound like ourselves and, ultimately, making them sound like Ezra Collective.You and Femi grew up together, played in church together and have now spent more than a decade in the same band. What can you do together rhythmically now that you couldn’t ten years ago?Ten years ago, I was probably a lot worse at the bass guitar. Not even in a self-deprecating way; I just hadn’t played that much, relatively speaking. I’d played in school bands and was still trying to find my feet in the jazz world.But the thing we prided ourselves on most was always being able to lock in rhythmically, especially on Afrobeat songs. That’s been really consistent over the last decade.Now, there’s probably an increased amount of linking up that we do on certain songs, but there are also more surprises when we play together because we don’t live with each other anymore. We’re not kids anymore. Sometimes when Femi plays certain things, I’m forced to be a little bit more reactive than I might have been in the past, which is great. I love playing with him. I wouldn’t have it any other way.There’s a lot of virtuosity in Ezra Collective, but the music rarely feels like five musicians trying to prove how good they are. As a bassist, how do you know when not to play?I’ve had the benefit of never necessarily seeing myself as a virtuoso in any way, shape or form. I never studied jazz and always felt like I was maybe the least experienced person in the rooms I was in growing up. I just felt an immense sense of privilege to be playing with such talented musicians.Especially having a brother like Femi, who has been playing drums since he was about three, while I didn’t start until I was 11, I was always in a position of humility. It was always: let me listen and play what is necessary.I had a teacher at school who described the bass as the glue in the music because it has the ability to speak rhythm, melody and harmony. Our job is to translate for the rest of the players in the band and make sure everything sticks together and everyone understands.If you take that job as a translator seriously, you don’t necessarily add too much of yourself. If somebody was translating my words and started adding their own opinions and bits and pieces, they wouldn’t be a very good translator.That’s how I’ve always tried to approach bass. First and foremost: what does the song need to tie these different elements together? Sometimes that means doing something difficult or virtuosic, but more often than not it’s sitting down on the groove and providing a beautiful foundation for the more colourful melodic instruments to do their thing over the top.The album asks why so much Black music created through difficult circumstances can contain so much joy. What’s your own answer to that?The only way that’s possible is because of hope.Our predecessors, our ancestors, those who came before us, our influences and inspirations, saw music as a tool for inspiring and invoking a fight in people — a fight for better tomorrows. That inherently is what hope is.Music and writing were often, and still are, used as a means of resistance, survival, faith and community, but always in the direction of something better. When you make that decision to say, “I’m going to hope for a better tomorrow,” sometimes you have to sing it for your soul to believe it. And when your soul believes it, I think your actions are affected by that.On “Only Love”, Pa Salieu is talking from a genuinely difficult period in his life while the band behind him sounds almost euphoric. How do you honour the pain in those words without simply turning it into celebration?I think Pa did that himself. Hearing the music and what we were laying down and deciding to recount moments from his life is exactly what I was speaking about before.If it was just poetry and you were listening to those words, it would be quite difficult to hear that somebody’s life had been like that. But then you think about the tension built up during the verses and what the release is. The release in the chorus is him saying, “Only love is what I have deep inside my soul.”That becomes an anthem of resistance and perseverance. You’re not dwelling or sticking in a bad situation. There’s that release of: this is how I kept fighting, this is how I continue, this is why I’m dancing right now.He’s such a musical rapper that he got that straight away. The theme of the lyrics fits the music absolutely perfectly.You came through Tomorrow’s Warriors, which was co-founded by Gary Crosby, himself a bassist. What did seeing a bass player become a mentor and community-builder teach you about what your own role could be?Gary is a special, special man, mentor and inspiration. His superpower is that he can make you feel like you can do anything.If you play one bass note but play it with your whole soul, he’ll stop the whole class and say, “Well done.” Or you’ll be playing and feeling like things are difficult, and he’ll identify you in the class, walk over and whisper in your ear, “Man, keep going. You’re sounding great. Just dig in a little bit more.”Those moments are invaluable because they make you feel like you can do anything.I take the lessons I learned from him onto the stage every single time we step out there. It’s not about how much you’re getting rated by everybody else. It’s about the feeling you have deep in your soul and the conviction you have when you’re playing the music. That’s what carries out to the people listening.Even if you hit a couple of duff notes, you can hit them properly, if that makes sense.I hope I’m honouring Gary with how I approach bass, not just in what I’m playing, but in trying to have confidence without arrogance. That’s something he definitely taught us.Tomorrow’s Warriors gave you somewhere to develop before there was any guarantee Ezra Collective would become successful. Now that you’ve played Wembley Arena, won the Mercury Prize and won BRIT Group of the Year, what responsibility do successful musicians have to protect those spaces?Tomorrow’s Warriors was a place of inspiration, education and beautiful obscurity, which is needed.We’ve all got examples of child stars who attain fame at such a young age, and we know how that story can go. There’s such an importance in developing in obscurity. There’s a massive place for organisations like Tomorrow’s Warriors where you can hone your craft, but also develop an approach to music that is well-rounded, holistic, always listening, meek, confident and yet not egotistical.It’s our responsibility as people who are maybe a little bit ahead of those 10 or 15 years younger than us to pass on these lessons, teach one another and create spaces where people can grow and develop in obscurity.Someone once told me it’s like taking photographs on a film camera. They have to be developed in a darkroom. If you expose them to the light too quickly, you can lose what could have been something beautiful.I try to hold onto that. Success or the spotlight may happen afterwards, or it may not. But at the very least, young people can have a level of grounding and know that their value isn’t built on success as deemed by other people. It’s about success as deemed by their integrity and the effort they’ve put into what they’re doing.The five of you increasingly have substantial musical lives outside Ezra. What does the word “Collective” mean now compared with when you started the band as teenagers?I’m super happy everyone’s doing their thing. We’re creatives and artists at the end of the day, so there’s spillover and there are projects people want to pursue.I don’t think the word “Collective” means anything different today than it did when we started the band. We are individuals who come together to do something with a common goal and agenda. That’s what a collective really is. It’s the identification of individuals without the veneration of one individual over the others.When we play shows, it feels like we’re making the crowd part of the collective. Our crew, staff and management all know they’re part of the collective as well. There’s this holistic way of looking at the music where we’re all trying to achieve one goal together.It speaks to the five of us as a band, then the whole crew, and then the crowds who come and watch and listen as well.Which bassline on Here Because of Hope are you most proud of — not necessarily because it’s technically difficult, but because it does exactly what the song needs?I don’t know if “proud” is the word, but I do like “Black Flag”. It’s one that I wrote, and I like the way it came about because I’d spent all day working on another song that wasn’t quite happening. Then, in about three minutes, I wrote “Black Flag”, played it to the guys and they were all like, “Yeah, that’s it.”Sometimes it’s a good reminder that there isn’t an equal ratio between how much time you spend on something and whether it’s going to work.If we’re looking at UK broken beat and a bit of what UK jazz sounded like early on, I think that song really nails it. We’ve had that kind of sound throughout quite a lot of our albums, so it’s nice to have that on this one.It is quite difficult to play as well. It kind of burns your hands if it goes on for too long. But yeah, I love that one.If the last ten years were about proving Ezra Collective could take this music into spaces people didn’t necessarily associate with jazz, what do you want the next ten years to prove?Our job is to stay the most ambitious people in the room every time. That’s something me and Femi have spoken about in random chats. We just need to stay the most ambitious people.Whatever that looks like in the next ten years remains to be seen. But if we end up playing a stadium tour, we can’t be surprised by it. Everyone else can be surprised, but we can’t. It was the same with Wembley or whatever accolades have come our way. They’re things we’d spoken about before and said, “You know what? I reckon we could do that. I reckon we could get there.”I see Ezra as having a bit of a mandate to keep going. Whenever somebody says, “the first jazz band to do something,” I’m like, that’s cool, but it’s also not cool because jazz has been around for a really long time. It shouldn’t have taken 100 years for certain things to happen.As long as there are still things to be done first, I see Ezra as having a mandate to knock on that door and see if it opens. The main thing is doing that without losing who we are. Can we be ourselves, play the music we love, not compromise on who we are and still pioneer certain things?The reason we want to do that isn’t for ourselves. When something gets done once, it becomes attainable and realistic for everybody coming after.There are so many bands coming out of the UK from a jazz background, and I’m looking forward to seeing how many of them become staples in UK music and are appreciated by people who, deep down, would probably love the music if they just knew about it.So yeah, onwards and upwards, by the grace of God.For Ezra Collective, ambition has never seemed to be about collecting milestones for their own sake. The Wembley shows, awards and “firsts” matter because each one makes the next possibility feel a little less distant for the musicians coming behind them. Here Because of Hope captures that same outlook: understanding where you come from, believing something better is possible and doing the work required to get there. More than a decade into their journey, Ezra Collective are still looking for the next door to knock on — only now, they know that when it opens, they are not walking through it alone.

Interview by Marco Sottana and Passion DzengaFor Angelo Marcus Elizabeth, fragrance has always been about more than smelling good. It is a way of holding onto memory, identity and the places that shape you. Born and raised in Curaçao and now based in Amsterdam, Angelo brings those worlds together through Marcus Elizabeth, a constantly evolving creative universe rooted in an Afro-Atlantic perspective.That world now crosses paths with Patta for Saffron Attitude, a warm and confident fragrance built around saffron, leather, incense and woods, with bergamot, ginger and cardamom cutting through the mix. After first introducing the collaboration in Paris, we bring things back home to Amsterdam.We caught up with Angelo to talk about his unexpected route into perfumery, turning confidence into something you can smell, and why the best fragrances need a little dirt under their fingernails.Before we get into perfume, who is Angelo Marcus Elizabeth, and what was the creative journey that brought you to where you are today?I’m a designer and perfumer from Curaçao, now based in Amsterdam. I’ve always been interested in the way objects, clothes, images and scents can carry identity and memory. As a child, I was constantly drawing and paying attention to patterns, colours, shapes and materials. Fashion eventually became the first professional language through which I could turn those observations into something tangible.Fragrance came into my life much more unexpectedly. During the pandemic, I started making scented candles at home, initially because I wanted to work with my hands and quiet my mind. At first, I was making them for myself, then for friends and family, but gradually I became much more interested in the scent itself. I became fascinated by how a handful of materials could create an entire atmosphere, bring back someone you hadn’t thought about for years, or completely change the feeling of a room.That curiosity eventually became Marcus Elizabeth. Today, I don’t really see fashion, perfume and objects as separate disciplines anymore. To me, they are simply different ways of telling and expressing the same story.You originally came from fashion and design. What could working with scent give you creatively that clothing couldn’t?Scent gets past the eye. With clothing, there is almost always an immediate visual judgement: you notice the silhouette, the colour, the styling, perhaps gender or status. Fragrance is much harder to control in that way. Someone can smell something and connect emotionally with it before they have even decided whether they consciously “like” it. I found that incredibly powerful.Fashion taught me about proportion, material, contrast and construction, and I still use all of those ideas when I think about perfume. Fragrance gives another level of intimacy. You can wear a perfume underneath everything and nobody necessarily has to know it is there. It can feel completely private, while at the same time changing the way other people experience your presence. That combination of intimacy and impact is something I find very special.You were born and raised in Curaçao before making Amsterdam home. What do those two places smell like to you?Curaçao smells warm to me. I think of sun on skin, humidity,  salt, dry earth, plants just after they have been watered, fruit ripening, flowers, cooking and the sea. There is a certain density to smell in a hot climate; everything seems to project differently.One of my strongest memories is my grandmother’s garden. There were mangoes, mispel, papaya, guava, watermelon and citrus. I had to water the plants every day, and that is where I really started noticing that every plant had its own smell. I loved the lemon tree in particular. Sometimes I would put pieces of lemon peel in my pocket just so I could keep smelling them throughout the day.Amsterdam is completely different. I associate it with cooler air, rain, wet stone, wood, old buildings, coffee and, during winter, sometimes smoke drifting out of chimneys. At the same time, Amsterdam is such an international city that you can turn a corner and suddenly smell spices or food that transport you somewhere completely different.Curaçao gave me warmth and instinct, while Amsterdam gave me structure and contrast. I think Marcus Elizabeth exists somewhere between those two worlds.Are there particular materials, smells or olfactive memories from either place that continue to find their way into your work?Definitely. Citrus peel, green leaves, tropical fruits, flowers, dry woods, warm skin and the smell of the sea keep returning in different ways. But I’m usually more interested in translating the memory than reproducing the smell literally.If I think about fruit from Curaçao, for example, I don’t necessarily want to make a perfume that smells like fruit juice. I might be more interested in the skin of the fruit, its bitterness, a green stem, the humidity around it or simply the sensation of eating it in the heat. Those details often feel more personal and more interesting to me.Amsterdam brings another set of textures into the work: woods, leather, wet stone or mineral notes, smoke and clean musks. Those materials allow me to put structure around the warmth. Again, it is that contrast between the two places that often becomes the starting point.Marcus Elizabeth describes itself as being carried by an “Afro-Atlantic essence.” What does that mean to you personally, and how does something as broad and layered as that actually translate into an olfactive identity?For me, Afro-Atlantic is not a perfume note and it isn’t a formula. It is a way of understanding where I come from. Curaçao sits at an intersection of Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas and Europe. Our language, food, music, architecture and rituals have all been shaped by movement across the Atlantic. There is a lot of beauty in that, but also a very complicated history.I don’t want to reduce something so layered to “tropical notes” or to a stereotypical idea of what a Caribbean fragrance is supposed to smell like. Instead, it influences how I put materials together. I’m interested in warmth alongside discipline, sensuality alongside restraint, something natural against something polished or urban.That can mean a tropical fruit meeting leather, or a floral placed next to something mineral or woody. Something familiar can be made slightly strange. That tension feels much closer to my identity than simply making something and saying: this smells Caribbean.Your journey into fragrance started with you making candles in your attic for yourself, friends and family. Do you remember the first scent you made where you thought, “there might actually be something here”?I remember the feeling more clearly than one exact formula. I was making scented candles very intuitively, without really thinking of them as a business, and then people started responding to them much more strongly than I had expected. They weren’t just saying, “this smells nice.” They wanted to know what the scent was, whether I could make another one or whether they could buy one for somebody else.That was when something shifted for me. I realised that I wasn’t simply making a scented object; I was creating an atmosphere that people wanted to bring into their own lives. From that moment on, I started taking the materials, formulation and the actual craft of perfumery much more seriously.How important is memory to the way you create a fragrance? Are there smells from your childhood that you can still access instantly?Memory is probably one of the most important things in my work. Smell is strange because a memory can disappear from your conscious mind for years, and then one scent suddenly brings the entire thing back. It is not only the image. You remember the temperature, the place, the person and sometimes even exactly how you felt in that moment.My grandmother’s garden is still very accessible to me in that way, especially the citrus leaves and peels, but also bananas, mangoes, flowers and the smell of plants after they have just been watered.I don’t necessarily try to reconstruct those memories literally in a perfume. I use them more as raw material. Sometimes only one small part of a memory enters the fragrance: a green note, a bitter peel effect, a humid floral feeling or a warm wood.For me, perfume can be a door to memory, but the beautiful thing is that it can also create completely new memories for the person wearing it.How do you reference where you come from without becoming nostalgic or overly literal?That is something I think about a lot, because heritage should never become costume. If you translate everything literally, you can very quickly reduce a culture to a set of recognisable symbols: coconut, rum, tropical flowers, bright colours. That doesn’t represent my experience of Curaçao.I would rather take something culturally specific and ask myself what it actually means to me emotionally or materially. What is the texture of that memory? Where is the tension in it? What happened around that smell?From there, I can translate it into something contemporary. The goal is never to recreate the past perfectly. I want the past to have a conversation with the person I am today.When you begin developing a new fragrance, what comes first?A new fragrance can begin almost anywhere. Sometimes the starting point is a material, sometimes a name arrives first, and sometimes it is an image, a person, a place or even a contradiction that I find interesting.The first question I normally ask myself is: what should this perfume feel like? From there, I begin collecting references and materials and start building an accord that captures the central idea. Once that accord works, the process becomes almost architectural. I start asking what needs to support it, where the tension should come from, what needs to disappear and how the fragrance should move from the opening into the skin.I rarely want a perfume to explain itself completely within the first five seconds. I like the idea that you have to discover it gradually.Let’s get into Saffron Attitude. What was the first conversation between Marcus Elizabeth and Patta, and at what point did you realise there was a fragrance to be made together?The first conversation actually wasn’t about making a perfume. It was much more fundamental: we were talking about whether Marcus Elizabeth and Patta were genuinely a good match, and whether bringing these two worlds together could become the beginning of something beautiful rather than simply a one-off collaboration.A big part of that conversation was also about my ambitions as a black perfumer and founder. The perfume industry still has very few black perfumers and black-owned houses with real visibility, particularly at the level where I want Marcus Elizabeth to operate. I spoke very openly about where I want to take the brand, the space I want to create within the fragrance industry and what it means to build that from my own perspective.The question then became: what role could Patta play in that journey? Patta truly asked how can we help? That made the collaboration much bigger to me than simply putting two brand names next to each other. Patta has spent years building a platform around culture and community and creating space for people and ideas that do not necessarily come through traditional routes.Once we realised there was a genuine alignment between us, fragrance became the natural medium through which to express it. Saffron Attitude grew from that conversation and became a fragrance about presence, confidence and taking up space without apologising for it. In that sense, the idea behind the scent is very closely connected to the reason the collaboration exists in the first place.If you had to describe Patta into an olfactive identity before this collaboration existed, what would it smell like?Warm, direct, textured and slightly rebellious. I would imagine spice, worn leather, woods and incense, perhaps with something mineral or metallic underneath. But there would also have to be freshness, because Patta has a lot of energy. I wouldn’t want it to become too heavy or nostalgic.It should smell like someone entering a room without asking permission to be there. And actually, when you describe it that way, you end up quite close to Saffron Attitude.Which side of saffron were you interested in bringing forward for Patta?The leathery, dry and spicy side. We didn’t want saffron to become overly sweet or conventionally luxurious. Saffron can have this almost metallic tension to it, and I find that incredibly contemporary.In Saffron Attitude, leather, incense and woods give the fragrance depth, while bergamot, ginger and cardamom keep energy running through the composition. So the saffron has presence, but it isn’t sitting there like a precious jewel that you aren’t allowed to touch. It has a little dirt under its fingernails.How do you translate something abstract like confidence into the texture, projection and composition of a fragrance?Confidence isn’t necessarily loud. Someone can walk into a room, barely say anything and still completely change the energy. That distinction was important when we were developing Saffron Attitude. I didn’t want to create a fragrance that simply screamed through enormous projection; I wanted it to have presence.You build that presence through contrast and structure. The opening immediately brings energy, while saffron, incense, iris and leather give the fragrance texture and identity. Then the woods underneath create stability and keep everything grounded.The end result has to feel composed rather than desperate for attention. For me, that is confidence: you notice it, but it doesn’t need your approval.How important was the progression, or drydown, to the fragrance?Very important, because I don’t think a perfume should be a photograph. It should be a film. The first spray of Saffron Attitude is bright, spicy and energetic, but then it gradually begins to reveal more texture. The iris changes the surface of the fragrance, incense introduces smoke, and the saffron and leather create warmth and tension.As it develops further, the woods, vetiver and amber become increasingly important. That evolution is part of the personality of the fragrance. You encounter the confidence first, but as you spend more time with it, you begin to understand the depth underneath.Was the contrast between bright and dark, fresh and warm, spicy and woody deliberately built into the fragrance?Absolutely. I’m very interested in contrast because people aren’t one thing either. Patta can be street and sophisticated at the same time, rebellious but also incredibly precise. Marcus Elizabeth similarly exists somewhere between island warmth and urban structure.It therefore felt very natural for the fragrance to contain those contradictions. Without the brighter elements, the leather, saffron and woods could easily become too heavy. At the same time, without those darker materials, the freshness would not have enough gravity.It is really the tension between those two sides that makes the fragrance interesting.Was there a version of Saffron Attitude that almost became the final fragrance but ultimately got rejected?We actually started with three completely different fragrance directions. Two of them were rejected, while Saffron Attitude was the one that immediately stood out to us.What made it feel right was its spicy, bold and warm character. It simply had more presence. There was something about the combination of saffron, spice, leather and woods that connected very naturally with the energy we associated with Patta, while still feeling refined and wearable.The other two fragrances had interesting qualities, but Saffron Attitude had the strongest identity. It didn’t just smell good; it had an attitude. Once we recognised that, the decision became quite clear.What does Patta bring to the fragrance that Marcus Elizabeth might not have arrived at on its own, and what did Marcus Elizabeth bring into Patta’s world?Patta brought a certain directness into the process. Marcus Elizabeth can sometimes be very introspective; we think a lot about memory, ritual, material and atmosphere. Patta brought community, street energy and a kind of unapologetic cultural confidence that pushed the collaboration in another direction.At the same time, I think Marcus Elizabeth brought another sensory dimension into Patta’s universe. Clothing is something you see and touch, and music is something you hear, while perfume is almost invisible yet incredibly intimate and personal.In that sense, both brands pushed each other slightly outside their usual medium, which is when I think collaborations become genuinely interesting. I’m very thankful that Patta gave us the opportunity and trust to create something together in this way.How did you translate the same olfactive idea into the Saffron Attitude candle?You can’t simply pour a perfume formula into wax and expect exactly the same experience. Skin has warmth, movement and its own chemistry, whereas a candle interacts with a flame, a room and the air around it.For the candle, I wanted the saffron, leather, woods and amber to create more of an atmosphere around you. It can be slightly warmer and more enveloping because it is scenting an entire space rather than sitting on one person’s skin.The perfume becomes part of your personal presence, while the candle changes the environment around you. They speak the same language, but they speak it in different voices.Paris was effectively the introduction, but this is a collaboration between two Amsterdam-rooted worlds. Does bringing Saffron Attitude back to Amsterdam for the official launch feel different?Definitely. Paris was very exciting because you have that Fashion Week energy around you, and it was essentially our first opportunity to introduce Saffron Attitude to a wider audience.Amsterdam feels much more personal. This is where Marcus Elizabeth has its atelier, where Patta has built such an important cultural presence and where our communities actually overlap. Bringing the fragrance back here therefore feels a little like completing the circle. Paris was the introduction; Amsterdam is where Saffron Attitude comes home.Has anyone’s interpretation of Saffron Attitude made you smell the fragrance differently yourself?What I really enjoy is seeing how differently people move through exactly the same fragrance. One person immediately finds the saffron and leather, while someone else connects much more strongly with the incense. Others first notice the brighter spices or the softness of the iris.As a creator, you know every decision that went into the composition, so at some point you stop experiencing it completely innocently. Then somebody describes something you made using completely different words and suddenly you smell that part of the fragrance again.I actually like losing some of that control. Once a fragrance belongs to somebody else, their own experiences and memories become part of it too.Who did you imagine wearing Saffron Attitude while you were making it?I deliberately didn’t imagine one specific person. I was much more interested in imagining an attitude: someone who has their own point of view and a certain confidence in who they are.That person could be twenty or sixty. They could be incredibly expressive or extremely quiet. What connects them is that they are not dressing, speaking or living primarily for somebody else’s approval.That feels much more interesting to me than designing a perfume around a conventional demographic.Do you think the traditional idea of “men’s” and “women’s” perfume still has any relevance?As a marketing category, it obviously still exists, but creatively it isn’t very useful to me. Smell itself doesn’t have a gender.Leather can be beautiful on anyone, rose can be powerful, woods can be sensual, vanilla can be dark and florals can feel masculine. Those classifications tell us much more about cultural conventions than they do about the materials themselves.I would much rather ask someone: does this smell like you? To me, that is a much more contemporary and personal way of thinking about fragrance.Do you see Marcus Elizabeth ultimately as a perfume house, or as a much wider creative universe where scent happens to be the starting point?Perfume is at the centre, but Marcus Elizabeth is gradually becoming a wider creative universe. I still very much think of it as a perfume house because scent is our most important language and the place where many of our ideas begin, but I’ve never wanted creativity to stop at the bottle.Artifacts, candles, fashion, objects, imagery and exhibitions can all belong to the same world, as long as there is a clear reason for them to exist. Ultimately, I’m interested in building a universe that you can smell, wear, touch and live with.What do you think people misunderstand most about the craft of perfumery?Probably how much editing is involved. From the outside, perfumery can sound incredibly romantic: you choose a few beautiful ingredients, mix them together and suddenly you have a perfume.The reality is much more precise. A tiny adjustment can completely change the balance of a composition. Sometimes you add more of something because you want it to become more noticeable and somehow it becomes less visible. You remove one ingredient and another suddenly becomes incredibly loud. Something can smell beautiful on a blotter and behave completely differently on skin.A lot of perfumery is repetition, evaluation and restraint. Knowing what not to add is often just as important as knowing what to add.What scent do you personally never get tired of?Fresh citrus peel. I think that probably goes all the way back to the lemon tree in my grandmother’s garden.When you cut or peel a citrus fruit and the oils are released into the air, there is something incredibly alive about that smell. It is so familiar to me, but somehow it still manages to surprise me every time.And finally, when somebody sprays Saffron Attitude and walks out of the door, what do you want them to feel?I want Saffron Attitude to feel like the final thing you put on before leaving the house. You’ve chosen your clothes, your shoes and maybe your jewellery, and then the fragrance is that final gesture that completes everything.Not because the perfume suddenly transforms you into somebody else, but because it brings something forward that was already there. It gives you that final sense of presence, confidence and attitude.You spray it, and you’re ready to go.Saffron Attitude is that final move before you step out the door. It is not about becoming someone else, but bringing a little more of yourself forward. Now, the fragrance comes home to Amsterdam, the city where both Marcus Elizabeth and Patta have built their communities.Come experience Saffron Attitude for yourself this Friday, September 11 at Patta Amsterdam, where the fragrance and accompanying candle will be available in-store.

Interview by Passion Dzenga A year after releasing Pages of Philosophy, Ruby Francis still isn’t quite ready to close the book on it. If anything, the London singer, songwriter, producer and DJ has found another way into the record.Written and produced by Francis herself, Pages of Philosophy sits somewhere between R&B, neo-soul, jazz and electronic music, reflecting an artist who has never had much interest in staying inside one musical lane. Now, a new collection of remixes opens the album up even further, handing its songs to friends and collaborators from London to New York, Australia and South Africa and allowing them to pull the music into completely different spaces.It also arrives as Francis’ relationship with the dancefloor continues to deepen. Alongside making her own music, DJing has become another important part of her practice, changing how she thinks about movement, arrangement and what happens to a song once it leaves the studio.We caught up with Ruby to talk about giving Pages of Philosophy a second life, trusting other producers with her music, the difference between thinking like a songwriter and a DJ, her Jamaican and Italian-British roots, and what comes next.Pages of Philosophy has been out for a year now. When you listen back to the album today, what do you hear differently from when you first finished it?It’s hard to put into words because I feel a lot of different, contradicting things. It still feels brand new to me, and I’m still excited by it and its future. But at the same time, when I listen back, I feel that it’s ageing and nurturing, like good cheese or wine!I’m really proud of it and still feel excited by it. I love the musical and sonic choices I made, and I’m excited to watch it grow. It’s a bit like a baby turning into a toddler.What made this project feel like the right one to revisit through remixes rather than simply moving straight on to the next record?It almost wasn’t my decision! I got such great feedback from people, including a lot of artists, and a few of them asked if they could remix the record. It felt right to honour that, and I’m so happy I did.I’ve also been deepening my knowledge and career as a DJ, and I’m really starting to understand the power of remixes. Whether it’s bringing something onto the dancefloor or playing it on my radio shows, you’re giving the music a new life and giving different people new ways to digest it.I guess if you’re asking me why, my answer is: why not?You wrote and produced the original album yourself. What was it like handing those songs over to other producers and letting them reshape something so personal?If I’m honest, once the original project was released, I felt a sense of detachment from it. It no longer belongs to me. As an artist, I’ve done my part and handed it over to the world.I felt similarly about handing it over to other producers. These are producers I’m a fan of and also friends with, so there was already an element of trust and excitement around it.The remix project brings together artists from South Africa, Australia, New York and London. How did you choose the collaborators?It was all quite organic. I had pre-existing relationships with each of the artists involved and I’m genuinely a fan of all of their music.Geo Jordan is my chosen family. We’ve been friends and collaborators for years. MXXWLL I’ve known for many years too; we’ve always kept in touch online and started working on a few bits when he came to London. Geotheory and Fiji Mageba are artists I’ve been a fan of for a while — I love everything they release and we’ve always been in touch online. Jamie and Basile are friends and are always up to cool stuff, whether that’s playing live or DJing at events around the city.I’m super lucky to be in touch with all of them.Did you give anyone direction on where you wanted them to take the originals?None at all. I honestly didn’t have any expectations, because if I did, I feel like that would defeat the point of a remix.I wasn’t approaching it thinking about making music that sells. It was more about creative curiosity and seeing how each producer would interpret the music individually. I gave no direction to any of them and simply trusted their talents to create something unique to them.Was there one remix that completely surprised you or made you understand the original differently?They all did to an extent. I really loved hearing my vocals on Geotheory’s liquid vibe, and Fiji’s super slow, ethereal one.I also loved how all of the remixes reharmonised the chords I’d written. I’m a huge fan of chords and always love a good reharm. It’s so rewarding to my brain and spirit.Your own contribution is the club edit of “Y U Always On My Mind?”. How does your approach change when you’re thinking like a DJ rather than a songwriter or producer?I’m thinking more about bringing the mood and how it might fit with other songs rather than the arrangement or individual technical bits. I’m thinking, “How can I make people get gassed and move?” rather than, “How can this lyric tell this particular story?” or, “What type of snare should I use?”With this remix in particular, I pretty much just sped it up and made the arrangement longer so DJs can mix it with other tracks easily. I didn’t actually change anything in the production.Your music pulls from ’00s R&B, neo-soul, jazz and electronic music without ever sitting neatly in one space. Have you always been comfortable moving between those worlds?Absolutely. I’m always most comfortable outside the box.Each of these sounds has raised me both as an artist and as a human, and I love being able to pull inspiration from each genre. My expression has never strictly fallen into any one category. That’s just how it has always naturally been for me. I don’t know any different.You started writing and producing from a really young age. What did learning to produce your own music give you creatively that songwriting alone couldn’t?More ways to communicate and express myself — often more than lyrics can. Production says things that words cannot. Sometimes a progression of chords, a melody or an arrangement can say it all.With words, you can say, “I love you,” and of course there are other poetic ways to convey that. But musically, there are limitless ways to communicate the same feeling. It could be through the movement of chords, the space you use, bringing strings into one section and taking them away in another, or through synth lines that are slightly detuned, reverbs and textures.“I love you” can really be felt without the words.Your dad played bass and you grew up around a lot of music. What parts of your Jamaican and Italian-British upbringing do you recognise in your music now?It’s interesting because my cultures didn’t really play a huge part in my musical upbringing. It came more through subtle values at home and my wider family. I’d visit my Jamaican grandparents and hear their beautiful accents and stories from the past, or visit my Nonno and have risotto and learn words with him. Those things trickled down into my home as a child, but they weren’t necessarily the most prominent part of growing up.It’s actually in my adult years that I’ve become much more interested in the music and culture of Jamaica and Italy. Especially Italy. I’m obsessed with Italian film music from the ’50s through to the ’70s. Composers like Henry Mancini and Piero Piccioni have really inspired me.I’m also feeling called to travel to Jamaica and Italy to deepen my knowledge of my Jamaican Black history as well as my Italian history.And through my dad being with an Icelander and moving to Iceland, I now call Reykjavík a second home. I’m often back and forth between there and London and feel really familiar with the culture there too — Björk, hot springs, soup and the Northern Lights!You’ve mentioned everyone from Stevie Wonder and Jill Scott to Björk and Astrud Gilberto as influences. What part of your musical taste do you think might surprise someone who only knows you through your R&B records?Anyone who really knows me would say none of it is surprising! But perhaps people who are more familiar with the R&B side of my sound might be surprised by the more alternative stuff.I love indie, alternative and slightly rocky stuff like Men I Trust, as well as the old-school film music I mentioned earlier.On 10 September you’re performing at Gamla Bíó in Reykjavík around Yasiin Bey’s show. What does sharing a bill with an artist like him mean to you?It’s pretty nuts! It’s a massive privilege to share the stage with such a legend.Although I’m not the most familiar with his music, I love pretty much anything that came out of the Soulquarians, and I love what he stands for lyrically. I’ve heard he’s a wicked performer, so I’m excited to watch him do his thing. That’s the best way to fully educate myself!I also think it’s great that his music is being brought to the small population of Iceland. Big ups to my boy Benni, B Ruff, for making it all happen.The performance itself will be a DJ set by REW, with a few other artists joining for a kind of cypher set with some crazy visuals. It’ll be a vibe.After giving Pages of Philosophy this second life, what feels like the next chapter for Ruby Francis?New music! I’m going to be locking in over the next few months to work on my demos and a new direction.I’ll also be travelling to Jazzy Jeff’s Playlist Retreat this month, which I’m sure will bring about new inspiration and collaborations. I’m excited to finish up and release new stuff.I’m also working on my next live headline show in time for the five-year anniversary of my debut album, Archives.A year on, Pages of Philosophy feels less like a record Ruby Francis is looking back on and more like one that is still finding new places to go. Handing the songs over to friends and collaborators has opened them up to different tempos, dance floors and interpretations, while her own growing relationship with DJing has given her another way to understand how music can move between people.That same curiosity seems to be carrying Francis into whatever comes next. With new demos taking shape, time set aside for writing and collaboration, and the fifth anniversary of her debut album Archives approaching, she is already thinking beyond the world of Pages of Philosophy. If the remix project proves anything, though, it is that moving forward does not always mean leaving old work behind. Sometimes a song just needs a different set of ears, a different room or a few extra BPM to reveal what else was hiding inside it.

Words by Passion DEEZ | Phootgraphy by Lyza JaneFor nearly twenty years, Blah Records has quietly been proving that there is another way to build a career in music. Not through major labels, algorithm-friendly singles or carefully engineered moments of virality, but through something far less glamorous: consistency. While much of the industry has spent the past two decades chasing the next platform, the next trend or the next shortcut to visibility, the collective has done the opposite. They've built slowly, deliberately and almost entirely on their own terms. That wasn't the plan.When Lee Scott started releasing music in the mid-2000s, streaming platforms didn't exist. Social media wasn't a career strategy and "independent artist" hadn't yet become a marketing slogan. If you wanted people to hear your music, you either convinced someone else to release it or you figured out how to do it yourself. Blah Records was born out of the second option.Long before the label became one of the defining names in British underground rap, Scott and his friends were burning CDs at home, selling them through MySpace and posting them out one order at a time. There was no business model, no investment and certainly no ambition to build an institution. Every milestone that followed was simply the solution to whatever problem lay in front of them.Need more CDs? Get them replicated. Need distribution? Start a label. Need somewhere to perform? Book the show yourself. Need a scene? Build one.Looking back, it's easy to mistake that progression for careful planning. Spend enough time talking to Lee Scott and Black Josh, however, and another picture emerges. Blah wasn't built around some master strategy. It was built through momentum. Every decision led naturally to the next until, almost without noticing, they had created an ecosystem that could survive without asking anyone else for permission.Today that ecosystem stretches far beyond a record label. Blah has become home to one of British rap's most distinctive communities, producing solo records, collaborative projects, Cult of the Damned releases and an audience that has remained fiercely loyal despite existing almost entirely outside the machinery of the mainstream music industry. In an era increasingly dominated by playlists, engagement metrics and fleeting internet fame, that longevity feels almost radical.Fresh from an independently organised Australian tour and preparing to release their collaborative album It Made Sense at the Time, Scott and Josh aren't interested in celebrating survival for survival's sake. They're far more interested in whatever comes next. The conversation moves effortlessly between British rap's formative years, regional identity, creative discipline, disastrous tours and the peculiar satisfaction that comes from solving your own problems. Throughout it all, one idea keeps resurfacing. Blah never waited for an industry to believe in them. They built their own.Ask Lee Scott how Blah Records began and he almost sounds amused that anyone would imagine there was a grand design behind it. "There wasn't some master plan," he says. "We just needed somewhere to put our music out."It's an answer that immediately dismantles nearly twenty years of mythology. Blah has become one of British rap's defining independent institutions, but its origins were almost laughably ordinary. Before the label existed, Scott and his friends were already operating under the Anti-Heroes banner, recording mixtapes, burning CDs at home and selling them directly through MySpace. Every sale arrived through a tiny PayPal button embedded on a profile page. When somebody placed an order, another disc was burned, packaged by hand and taken to the post office."It was DIY before people even called it DIY," Scott recalls. Eventually the limitations of that approach became impossible to ignore. Burning individual CDs wasn't sustainable, so the group ordered a thousand professionally replicated copies. Suddenly they had boxes of records stacked around them and no way of getting those records into shops."The next logical step was distribution," Scott says. "Then the next logical step after that was creating a record label." That practical way of thinking has remained remarkably consistent throughout Blah's existence. Every obstacle simply became another task to solve. When their friend Alex — better known as Swiss — moved back to Switzerland after handling much of the label's early administration, Scott reluctantly found himself responsible for the business side too. "If you've met me," he laughs, "you'll know administration probably isn't where my strengths lie." Even so, the work got done.Looking back, Scott doesn't romanticise those early years. He doesn't describe them as visionary or revolutionary. Instead, he talks about them with the matter-of-fact tone of somebody fixing one leaking pipe after another. That mindset, more than any business strategy, would eventually define Blah Records. Because independence, for them, was never an identity. It was simply the only option.The story of Blah Records is often told through releases, tours and milestones, but Scott insists those things arrived much later. Before there was a label, there was simply a group of friends making music together because they enjoyed each other's company."The original crew was me, Salar, Bill Shakes and Tony Broke," he says. "I'd known some of those people since I was sixteen. Before there were labels or tours, we were just hanging around."As the years passed, that circle naturally expanded. Friends from London became collaborators. Manchester, Blackburn and Liverpool slowly blurred into one community. The geography changed, but the logic never did. Relationships came first. Music followed.That's perhaps why Blah has always felt different from a conventional record label. It doesn't operate like a roster assembled by A&R executives searching for complementary artists. It feels more like a constantly evolving friendship group whose members happen to make records together."When people describe Blah as a company, it always sounds a bit strange," Scott says. "Everyone on the label is someone I'd happily spend time with whether music existed or not."That chemistry explains why the catalogue is filled with collaborations that never feel manufactured. Duo records, posse cuts and one-off projects emerge organically because the artists already share the same spaces. They're in the studio together, travelling together or simply spending weekends together."If you're already sitting in the same room with your mates," Scott shrugs, "eventually somebody says, 'Let's make a tune.'"It's an understated observation, but one that reveals something fundamental about Blah's longevity. The label was never sustained by contracts or commercial obligations. It was sustained by genuine relationships. Long before "community" became one of the music industry's favourite buzzwords, Blah had accidentally built one.That sense of community extends beyond the artists themselves. Fans don't simply consume the music; they participate in the world around it. Shows feel less like isolated performances than reunions. Faces become familiar. New listeners are introduced by old ones. Records are bought not because they're being pushed by an algorithm but because people genuinely want to support the artists making them.It's a slower kind of growth, but one that's proved remarkably resilient. For listeners discovering Blah today, it's easy to forget just how unusual British rap once sounded. Or perhaps more accurately, how unusual it didn't. "When I first started recording," Scott says, "I was doing an American accent."He laughs as he says it, but the admission reflects a much broader moment in British hip-hop history. Throughout the late nineties and early 2000s, many UK rappers borrowed not only the sound but the cadence and pronunciation of the American artists they'd grown up listening to. Regional British accents were often viewed as obstacles rather than identities.Scott didn't think he was pretending to be someone else. He simply hadn't heard an alternative. "I'd literally never heard anybody from where I came from rapping," he says. "I wasn't trying to copy anyone. I was just imitating the music I loved." The turning point came through an unexpectedly simple question. Somebody older asked him why he was rapping in an American accent. "It sounds ridiculous now," he says, "but I'd never even considered there was another option."The internet was still fragmented. Music discovery relied on word of mouth, independent record shops and whatever happened to circulate through local scenes. Liverpool wasn't necessarily listening to London. Manchester wasn't constantly aware of what was happening in Glasgow or Bristol. Regional scenes often developed in parallel rather than together. "You had to actually go and find music," Scott remembers. "People forget that. You weren't endlessly scrolling."As British rap slowly became more confident in its own identity, artists across the country began embracing the voices they'd previously tried to suppress. Looking back, Scott describes hearing those records for the first time as strangely unfamiliar. "I'd spent so long listening to American hip-hop that hearing British accents almost sounded weird."Today, that idea feels almost impossible to imagine. Black Josh belongs to the generation that inherited that shift rather than initiating it. "For me, hearing Children of the Damned was massive," he says. "Those were actual regional accents. Not fake American voices. Just people sounding like where they were from." Around the same time, grime was making a similar argument from London. "When Dizzee Rascal came through, nobody thought he sounded American," Josh says. "He sounded exactly like London."For him, hearing Mancunian voices carry the same confidence was equally significant. It demonstrated that authenticity wasn't something to be polished away. Your accent wasn't a limitation. It was part of the music itself. That evolution mirrored Blah's wider philosophy. Just as they refused to imitate the industry's business model, they also refused to imitate someone else's identity. Instead of asking how close they could get to American rap, they asked a different question altogether. What would this sound like if it could only have come from here?The word independent has become one of the music industry's favourite buzzwords. It's applied so liberally that it has almost lost its meaning. Artists backed by distribution companies, management agencies and major-label funding routinely describe themselves as independent, often because they technically own their masters.Lee Scott has never been particularly interested in the distinction. "I don't think we ever called it a philosophy," he says. "It was just survival." That difference is important.Blah wasn't founded because its members rejected the music industry. It was founded because, at least in those early years, the industry simply wasn't paying attention. There was no queue of labels waiting to sign them, no established touring circuit for the kind of music they were making and no blueprint for building a career from regional underground rap. Rather than waiting for those opportunities to appear, they created their own."If nobody wanted to release the record, we'd release it ourselves," Scott says matter-of-factly. "If nobody booked us, we'd book our own shows. If nobody wanted to distribute it, we'd figure that out as well."Looking back, it's tempting to describe those decisions as visionary, but Scott refuses to romanticise them. Every milestone emerged from necessity rather than ambition. Every solution created another possibility."I think people assume we've always had this machine behind us," he says. "But every stage has been built from the previous one. You don't suddenly wake up with a functioning label, an audience and touring infrastructure. You spend years solving one problem after another until eventually you realise you've accidentally built an ecosystem."That ecosystem has become Blah's greatest achievement. Long before artists were talking about direct-to-fan relationships, Blah were cultivating one. They weren't simply releasing records. They were creating an audience that felt personally invested in everything surrounding the label. Shows became meeting points. Collaborations happened naturally because the artists already occupied the same spaces. Every release strengthened the world around it instead of existing as a standalone product.The result is a model that feels increasingly unusual in an age dominated by short attention spans. Rather than chasing as many listeners as possible, Blah focused on building deeper relationships with the ones they already had. Scott has little interest in viral success. "I'd much rather have a thousand people who genuinely care than a million people who watched something for fifteen seconds because an algorithm showed it to them."To him, longevity has always been a far more meaningful measure than visibility. "A career is people buying your records ten years later. It's somebody travelling across Europe to see you perform. It's fans introducing your music to their kids."Streaming numbers rarely tell that story. "If people are buying vinyl, buying merch and coming to shows," he says, "that's a community." Black Josh has seen that difference firsthand every time the pair step on stage. "Our crowds aren't there because one song blew up six weeks ago," he says. "A lot of them have been listening for years. They know album tracks. They know lyrics that were never singles. Some of them have literally grown up with us." He pauses before smiling. "That's worth way more than a number on a screen."That same practicality extends into Blah's creative process. The label's distinctive visual language — grainy music videos, surreal artwork and unmistakably DIY aesthetics — has become part of its identity, but Scott insists very little of it was ever planned.People often assume the rough edges are deliberate, an aesthetic statement designed to separate Blah from polished commercial rap. In reality, they were usually the product of limited budgets, available time and whoever happened to own a camera."Sometimes we'd literally wake up and decide to shoot a video that afternoon," Scott says. "You'd ring a mate, drive somewhere, film it, edit it... done."That approach eventually became a philosophy in its own right. "People read all sorts of meaning into it," he laughs. "Honestly, we just wanted to get things made." Perfection has never interested him as much as momentum. "I'd rather finish something that's eighty or ninety percent there than spend two years chasing perfection and never release anything."It's a lesson he's applied across almost every part of his creative life. Songs, artwork, videos — eventually everything reaches the same point where further refinement begins stripping away the spontaneity that made it compelling in the first place."Sometimes the first version captures something the twentieth one doesn't," he says. "You've got to know when to stop." That instinct has also shaped projects like Cult of the Damned, a collective that has become almost mythical within British underground rap. While fans often speak about it as though it were carefully curated, Scott remembers something much looser."There wasn't loads of planning," he says. "It was more like, 'Who's about today?'" The chemistry came from unpredictability. Throw eight or nine entirely different rappers into the same room and nobody knew what would happen next. "You could hear people enjoying themselves," he says. "I think listeners can tell when that's genuine." For Black Josh, that unpredictability also created a healthy sense of competition. "If you're on a track with six other rappers," he laughs, "you definitely don't want to have the weakest verse." Nobody coasted. Everybody pushed each other. Without anyone saying it out loud, the standard kept getting higher.For a label approaching its twentieth anniversary, Blah spends remarkably little time looking backwards. The Australian tour is a perfect example. From the outside, it looked like another milestone for a collective that has steadily expanded its reach without compromising its identity. Behind the scenes, however, it nearly collapsed before it began."Everything that could go wrong basically did," Scott says. "People disappeared. Plans changed. Money vanished." At one point, the tour looked beyond saving. Most artists would've cancelled. Scott admits they probably should have. Instead, they did what Blah has always done. They solved the next problem."I think we ended up spending something like twenty-five grand in the space of a week just to keep everything alive," he recalls. "It was terrifying. But once we'd committed, there wasn't really another option. You either lose everything or you make it work." Eventually, they made it work. Black Josh laughs at how differently those moments are remembered by everyone else. "People only see the photos afterwards," he says. "They see sold-out rooms, happy faces, everyone smiling. They don't see the weeks beforehand where you're wondering whether you've just made the worst financial decision of your life." He shrugs. "That's touring when you're doing it yourself."It's a story that feels strangely representative of Blah as a whole. The audience sees the finished record, the packed venue or the sold-out vinyl pressing. What they rarely see are the years of incremental problem-solving that made those moments possible in the first place. That same philosophy continues to shape the music itself.Despite the longevity of the label, neither Scott nor Josh speaks like someone preserving a legacy. The new collaborative album, It Made Sense at the Time, isn't presented as the culmination of twenty years' work, but simply the latest chapter in an ongoing conversation they've been having for most of their adult lives."If it ever started feeling like a job," Josh says, "I'd probably lose interest." Touring is work. Running a label is work. Answering emails is certainly work. Making music, however, remains something else entirely. "That's still the fun bit," he says. "That's still me and Lee sitting in a room making each other laugh."Scott's process hasn't changed much either. Ideas still arrive unexpectedly—sometimes while he's asleep. "I'll literally wake up with a line in my head," he says. "If I don't write it down immediately, it's gone forever." His phone is filled with half-asleep voice notes recorded in the middle of the night. Some become songs. Others make no sense whatsoever. "I'll listen back a week later and think, 'Actually... that's not bad.' Or I'll think, 'What on earth was I talking about?'" He laughs. "Either way, that's always been my process." The instinct to trust the first idea, to keep moving and to resist overthinking, extends beyond songwriting. Scott has never been interested in endlessly polishing creative work for the sake of perfection. "Sometimes the first version captures something the twentieth one doesn't," he says. "You've got to know when to stop."It's advice that feels increasingly relevant in a music industry obsessed with optimisation. Artists are encouraged to chase trends, feed algorithms and treat every platform as though it might determine the course of their careers. Scott sees that as a dangerous way to think."Don't build your career around something you don't control," he says. "Algorithms change. Platforms disappear." The things that actually endure, he argues, are much simpler. "The work. Your audience. Your reputation." Everything else comes and goes. Josh agrees."The quickest way to make yourself miserable is comparing yourself to everyone else," he says. "Somebody will always have more followers. Somebody will always have bigger numbers. That doesn't mean they're making better music."For both of them, curiosity remains a far stronger motivator than recognition. "I've never really been interested in proving people wrong," Scott says. "I'm much more interested in proving to myself that I can still make something exciting."Every record, he believes, should surprise him. "If I already know exactly how it's going to sound before I make it, then what's the point?" Josh nods. "I don't really think in terms of legacy," he says. "People talk about legacy when they're looking backwards." He smiles. "We're still looking forwards."Nearly twenty years after its founding, Blah Records remains one of the rare examples of independence that extends beyond ownership. It isn't simply a label operating outside the mainstream; it's an ecosystem built through patience, friendship and an unwavering belief that if something doesn't exist, you can create it yourself. Every record, every tour and every collaboration has been another step in a process that was never meticulously planned, only continually refined.Blah never set out to become a blueprint for independent music. Lee Scott and Black Josh simply kept making the next record, booking the next tour and solving the next problem in front of them. Looking back, that's exactly what made them one.

Few people embody the relationship between creativity and the outdoors as naturally as Elisa. Born in Venice but drawn to the peaks of the Italian Alps, she has built a life where exploration, design and storytelling exist in constant dialogue with the landscapes that surround her. Whether hiking remote trails, climbing exposed ridgelines, wild camping beneath the stars or sleeping in the snow, Elisa approaches the mountains not as somewhere to escape everyday life, but as the place where she feels most at home. That connection extends beyond adventure. As one-third of the creative collective MBRACE, she brings the patience, observation and respect she has developed outdoors into projects spanning design, fashion and visual storytelling, collaborating with brands such as The North Face while advocating for a more thoughtful relationship with both the products we consume and the environments we inhabit. We caught up with Elisa to discuss growing up between Venice and the Dolomites, embracing discomfort, finding confidence through solitude and why curiosity remains the driving force behind everything she creates.You were born in Venice, but you've built much of your life around the mountains. Can you tell me about that journey? Was there a moment when the outdoors shifted from being somewhere you visited to somewhere you truly belonged?I’ve always felt connected to nature; my parents spent a lot of time taking me into the forests and the mountains, so being outdoors has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. As I got older, I naturally started exploring on my own, and that’s when something changed. The mountains stopped being a place I visited with my family and became a place where I felt myself completely. They’re where I feel the most present, the most grounded, and the most free. It never felt like I consciously chose that life, it simply grew with me and became who I am.Growing up between the lagoon and the mountains offers two very different landscapes. How has that shaped the way you experience nature today, and what was it about the Dolomites that ultimately made them feel like home?I think growing up between such different environments taught me that nature has so many ways of making you feel connected. The lagoon has a calm, quiet energy, while the mountains are raw, powerful and constantly changing. I love both, but the Dolomites have always given me a stronger sense of belonging. Every season transforms the landscape, and no matter how many times I return, they always have something new to teach me. They challenge me, inspire me and make me feel grounded at the same time.You spend a lot of time hiking, climbing, wild camping and even sleeping in the snow. What keeps pulling you back, and do you see the outdoors as an escape from everyday life or simply another way of living?For me, it’s not really an escape; it’s simply a way of living. Being outdoors gives me a sense of freedom and motivation that I can’t find anywhere else. It pushes me to know myself better, to understand my limits, and at the same time it reminds me to appreciate the simple things. Life feels more real when you’re outside, moving through nature one step at a time.Living so closely with nature inevitably changes your perspective. How has spending so much time outdoors reshaped your relationship with discomfort, and what's something people often misunderstand about life in the mountains?Spending so much time outside has taught me that discomfort isn’t something to avoid; it’s often where you grow the most. Being cold, tired or facing unexpected conditions makes you adapt and stay present. I think many people imagine life in the mountains as either romantic or extreme, but the reality is somewhere in between. It’s about respecting nature, being prepared, and accepting that you can’t control everything. Many of your adventures take place alone in remote places. What have those moments of solitude taught you about yourself? Has being alone become a source of comfort, or does it still come with moments of uncertainty?I genuinely love being alone in the mountains because it reminds me how much I can rely on myself. Of course, some moments can be a little scary, especially in remote places, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But overcoming those situations on my own gives me a much stronger sense of confidence and awareness. Solitude has become something I really value because it allows me to listen to myself without distractions.Whether you're sleeping in the snow or climbing remote peaks, there's always an element of risk. How do you prepare yourself mentally before setting off, and where do you personally draw the line between adventure and unnecessary risk? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you genuinely questioned whether to continue?Preparation is everything. Before every trip, I make sure I have the right equipment, I carefully check the weather forecast, study the route, look at GPS tracks and gather as much information as possible. That preparation gives me confidence, but it also helps me recognise when it’s time to stop. I remember one trip where the snow conditions made it unsafe to continue, so I decided to turn back. It wasn’t the outcome I wanted, but it was the right decision. I think real adventure also means knowing when to let go of your original plan. The mountain will always be there another day.You recently explored Valle Aurina. What drew you there, what made the landscape stand out, and did that journey change your perspective on the Italian Alps in any way?I had wanted to visit Valle Aurina for a long time because I’d heard how wild and untouched it feels compared to other parts of the Alps. What really impressed me was the silence and the feeling of space you can spend hours walking without seeing many people. It reminded me that even in places I think I already know, there are still landscapes capable of surprising me. That trip made me appreciate even more how different the Italian Alps really are.Beyond your outdoor practice, you're also one-third of MBRACE. How did the three of you come together, and how do your different creative backgrounds complement one another?MBRACE was born from the connection between the three of us: me, Enrico and Jonny.We’re three very different people, but we share the same vision and curiosity. Each of us observes the world from a different perspective and brings different skills to the table. When those perspectives come together, they create something that’s always fresh and inspiring. We all share a passion for nature, fashion, sport, art and creativity, and I think that’s what makes our work feel authentic. Your work sits at the intersection of the outdoors, design and storytelling. In what ways do your experiences in nature directly influence the creative projects you take on?Nature influences almost everything I create. Spending time outdoors teaches me to slow down, observe details and pay attention to light, textures and movement. Those experiences naturally shape the way I approach storytelling and design. I like creating projects that feel honest and that communicate real experiences rather than just beautiful images. Being outside constantly reminds me that the strongest stories come from genuine moments.You recently worked with The North Face around circular design during Milan Design Week. What interested you about that project, and how do you think design can encourage people to build a deeper relationship with the environments they inhabit?What I found most interesting was the idea of giving materials a second life instead of seeing them as waste. I think good design has the power to make people think differently about the products they own, encouraging them to repair, reuse and value things for longer. When design tells a story, it can also strengthen our connection with the environment and remind us that every choice has an impact.Sustainability has become a buzzword, but your work is rooted in spending real time outdoors. What does sustainability actually look like in your day-to-day life, and have you noticed the mountains themselves changing over the years?For me, sustainability isn’t something you talk about; it’s something you practise every day through small choices. I try to buy less but better, repair my gear whenever possible, reuse what I already own and always leave nature exactly as I found it. Spending so much time outdoors also makes it impossible not to notice the changes happening in the mountains. Snow arrives later, glaciers are shrinking and weather conditions have become much more unpredictable. Seeing those changes with my own eyes makes protecting these places feel even more important.Looking ahead, you've built a life that connects exploration, design and creativity. What kind of legacy do you hope that way of living leaves behind—for the people who follow your work and for the landscapes that continue to inspire it?I hope my work encourages people to spend more time outside and build their own relationship with nature, whatever that looks like for them. You don’t need to climb the highest peaks to experience something meaningful; you just need to be curious and willing to explore. If I can inspire even a few people to respect nature more, move through it with awareness and appreciate its value, then I’ll be happy. At the same time, I hope the landscapes that inspire me will remain protected so future generations can experience the same sense of freedom that I have.For Elisa, the mountains are far more than a backdrop for adventure. They are a place of learning, creativity and perspective, where every journey reinforces the value of patience, preparation and respect for the natural world. Whether through MBRACE, her collaborations with The North Face or the countless hours she spends exploring remote landscapes, her work is guided by the belief that meaningful stories begin with genuine experience. In an age where the outdoors is increasingly filtered through social media and spectacle, Elisa offers a quieter alternative—one rooted in curiosity, self-reliance and a lasting commitment to protecting the places that continue to shape her. Her hope is simple: that others are inspired to step outside, move through nature with intention and leave it just as they found it, ensuring future generations can discover the same sense of freedom that first drew her to the mountains. 

Interview by Passion Dzenga and Liesje Verhave | Imagery courtesy spazioSERRAMost galleries ask people to come to them. spazioSERRA asks something different. Hidden inside Milan's Lancetti railway station, the independent exhibition space exists in a place designed for movement rather than contemplation. Every day, commuters, students, families and local residents pass through its doors, often encountering contemporary art entirely by accident.That tension has shaped the collective's practice since its founding. Rather than treating the station as simply another venue, spazioSERRA has embraced it as both subject and collaborator. Here, exhibitions are conceived specifically for a public in transit, where artworks compete with train announcements, morning routines and the constant rhythm of the city itself. There is no white cube, no controlled viewing experience and no expectation that visitors arrive already interested in contemporary art. Instead, every exhibition begins with a simple question: what happens when art interrupts everyday life?We spoke with the spazioSERRA collective about nearly a decade of working inside a railway station, developing a curatorial practice rooted in site-specificity, and why they believe public art should never be neutral.spazioSERRA has always existed inside a railway station rather than a traditional gallery. Why was that important from the beginning?The station has never simply been a venue for us. From the very beginning, it was the starting point for the entire project. Rather than asking how we could fit contemporary art into a railway station, we were interested in understanding what kind of exhibitions could only exist in a place like this. The context changes everything. A station is designed for movement, transition and routine. People aren't there because they've decided to spend an afternoon looking at contemporary art. They're commuting to work, heading home, meeting friends or simply passing through.That completely transforms the relationship between the artwork and its audience. In a traditional gallery, visitors have already made a conscious decision to engage with an exhibition before they even walk through the door. They arrive prepared to spend time looking, reading and reflecting. Here, that expectation disappears. Most people encounter the exhibitions unexpectedly. Some only glance at them while waiting for a train. Others return every day as part of their commute and slowly build a relationship with the work over weeks or months without even realising they're doing so.For us, that's incredibly exciting because it means the exhibitions become part of everyday life rather than something separate from it. During the pandemic, for example, many museums and galleries were closed, but because our exhibitions were visible from the station itself, people could continue experiencing contemporary art simply by moving through the city. That reinforced something we'd always believed: art doesn't need to exist inside isolated cultural institutions. It can become another layer of the urban landscape, living alongside the rhythms and routines of the people who pass through it every day.Your audience is often accidental rather than intentional. How does that change the way you think about curating exhibitions?It influences almost every curatorial decision we make. Unlike a museum or commercial gallery, we can't assume that our audience already has an interest in contemporary art or even knows who the exhibiting artist is. Most visitors didn't wake up planning to see an exhibition. They're simply moving through the station as part of their daily routine. That means we have to think very carefully about how somebody encounters the work for the first time.Accessibility is important to us, but we don't think of accessibility as simplifying ideas. Instead, it's about creating multiple points of entry. Someone who only has thirty seconds before their train arrives should still be able to connect with something visually or emotionally. At the same time, somebody who returns every day for a month should continue discovering new layers, new references and new meanings each time they encounter the work.That creates a very different kind of exhibition design. We think about sightlines, movement through the station, how the architecture frames the work and how people experience it from different distances. The audience isn't standing still. They're constantly in motion. The exhibitions have to acknowledge that movement rather than resist it.What's particularly interesting is that people begin creating their own relationships with the exhibitions over time. Some commuters see the same installation every morning on their way to work and every evening on their way home. Without necessarily intending to, they become long-term spectators. Their understanding develops gradually through repetition rather than through a single dedicated visit. Site-specificity seems to be central to your programme.How do artists respond differently when they know their work will exist in a public space?That's one of the reasons artists are often excited to work with us. We don't invite people to simply install an existing body of work inside the station. We ask them to begin with the station itself. The architecture, the movement of people, the visibility of the space and the surrounding neighbourhood all become part of the conversation before a single artwork is made.That process often changes the work dramatically. Instead of treating the exhibition as something independent from its surroundings, artists begin responding directly to the environment. Sometimes the architecture becomes part of the installation. Sometimes the public becomes part of the work. Sometimes the exhibition only makes sense because it's happening in that precise location.Over the years, we've realised that there isn't really a clear boundary between the artwork and the station anymore. The two continuously influence one another. The work transforms the space, but the space also transforms the work. The audience completes that relationship because every person experiences the exhibition differently depending on where they're coming from, how much time they have, and what they're bringing with them emotionally that day. For us, that's what site-specific practice really means. It's not simply adapting something to fit a location. It's allowing the location itself to become an active collaborator in the exhibition.This year's programme is titled Co-presence Is a Passing Gesture. What does that phrase mean to you?The title emerged quite naturally once we began looking at all of the selected projects together. Originally, we approached this season differently from previous years. Rather than establishing a broad curatorial theme and asking artists to respond to it, we opened the call without prescribing a subject. We wanted to understand what artists themselves were already thinking about and what kinds of questions felt urgent to them.After selecting the projects, we started noticing unexpected connections. Again and again, artists were exploring ideas around spectatorship, participation, waiting, public space and the different ways people occupy environments together without necessarily interacting.A railway station became the perfect place to think about those ideas because it is fundamentally a place of co-presence. Thousands of people share the same physical environment every day. They're together, but they're rarely connected. They're passing one another constantly without necessarily acknowledging one another's existence.The exhibitions each approach that condition differently. Some invite participation. Others ask people to observe. Some explore waiting as a political condition, while others think about performance, intimacy or memory. What connects them all is this idea that relationships can exist even if they're brief, temporary or almost invisible.In many ways, that's exactly what happens inside the station every single day. It shows that these ideas are being tested through the exhibitions themselves.The exhibitions this season all seem to approach co-presence from different perspectives. Could you tell us about some of the recent projects and how they connect to the wider programme?One of the things we've been interested in throughout this season is how each artist approaches the idea of co-presence differently. Rather than illustrating the concept directly, every exhibition has explored a different relationship between the artwork, the audience and the public space of the station.Joan Horrach's installation was a good example of that. The work centred on waiting, but it wasn't simply about representing waiting as a theme. Instead, it mirrored what was already happening inside the station. The installation resembled a waiting room that could easily have belonged to the railway station itself, blurring the boundary between the exhibition and everyday life. People waiting for trains became part of the work without necessarily realising it, while the work itself reflected the rhythms, routines and temporary encounters that already define the station. In many ways, it asked visitors to recognise that waiting isn't an interruption to public life but one of its fundamental conditions.Valerio Torrisi's exhibition approached waiting from a much more personal and political perspective. Through a long-duration performance, he explored the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in Italy, particularly the fact that same-sex couples are still denied full marriage equality. Rather than presenting this through explicit political messaging, he built the work around the poetic image of a partner waiting for a wedding that never arrives. Throughout the exhibition, the flowers within the installation slowly decayed, becoming a physical measure of time passing without resolution. That gradual transformation reflected both the emotional exhaustion of waiting and the reality that progress, while happening, often feels painfully slow for the communities directly affected.What interested us most about Valerio Torrisi's project was the way it embodied these ideas rather than illustrating them. Visitors didn't necessarily arrive knowing when the performer would appear or even exactly what they were waiting for. They found themselves sharing that uncertainty with the work itself. The performance resisted fixed identities and clear definitions, allowing the body, language and duration of the piece to communicate experiences that couldn't easily be reduced to a single statement or slogan. In that sense, it became less about explaining LGBTQ+ rights and more about allowing people to inhabit, even briefly, the emotional condition of waiting for recognition.The unpredictability of public space makes these encounters especially meaningful. We can carefully consider how an exhibition is installed, how it addresses the architecture and how people might move through it, but we never truly know how the public will respond. Sometimes an installation encourages immediate participation. Other times people simply walk straight past. With Fidaty Collective's football field installation, for example, we initially thought the project wasn't working because nobody wanted to engage with it. Then, unexpectedly, a group of visitors stayed for almost an hour playing together. Those moments remind us that public space always resists complete control. The audience ultimately completes the work in ways that can't be anticipated.Looking ahead, the final exhibitions continue expanding these ideas in new directions. What can visitors expect from the remainder of the programme?The next projects continue exploring spectatorship and participation, but each approaches those ideas through very different forms. The next exhibition is by Elisi’s collective, whose practice sits somewhere between design, research and installation. Their project introduces the idea of the "mnemosphere," a term they developed to describe the relationship between atmosphere and memory. Rather than presenting a series of individual snow globes, the installation transforms the entire space into a boule à neige. What makes the work particularly interesting is that it only becomes active through the movement of visitors passing by the space.Hidden sensors respond to the presence of commuters, generating bursts of movement that cause the snow throughout the space to swirl. Most visitors won't even realise they've activated the installation. They're simply walking through the station as they always would. That invisible participation perfectly reflects the wider theme of the season. Whether intentionally or not, people continuously shape the exhibition simply through their presence. We hope that for those who stop to spend more time with the work, these moments of activation begin to open up more personal reflections around memory, atmosphere and the ways our environments quietly influence our emotional lives.The final project, by Sveva Crisafulli, moves in a completely different direction. Through a performance and accompanying editorial publication, she investigates the practice of cake sitting—a subject that initially surprised us because none of us were familiar with its history. As we began researching the project together, we realised it opened up much broader conversations around the body, sexuality, food, spectacle and feminist theory.Rather than treating cake sitting as an isolated or sensational act, Sveva traces its cultural history from the Renaissance through to contemporary internet culture, asking what this unusual practice reveals about desire, consumption, performance and the ways bodies are viewed in public. Unlike many of our previous exhibitions, this project invites audiences directly into the exhibition space itself, creating a shared encounter rather than one experienced solely through the station windows.Although the two exhibitions are formally very different, they continue the same conversation that has shaped the entire season. Both ask how people participate in artworks, whether consciously or unconsciously. Both question the relationship between spectatorship and embodiment. And both remind us that contemporary art doesn't simply exist to be looked at. It creates situations where audiences become active participants, sometimes without even realising it.After nearly a decade, spazioSERRA has demonstrated that contemporary art doesn't need the neutrality of the white cube to have an impact. If anything, its power is amplified by the unpredictability of public life. Within the constant movement of Milan's Lancetti station, exhibitions become part of the city's rhythm rather than an escape from it. They ask commuters to pause, if only briefly, and reconsider the spaces they move through every day.Throughout our conversation, one idea surfaced repeatedly: relationships. Relationships between artworks and architecture, artists and audiences, strangers sharing the same space, and the fleeting moments of attention that connect them. Whether through Joan Horrach's reflections on waiting, Valerio Torrisi's meditation on queer recognition, Elisi’s collective’s invisible interactions with memory or Sveva Crisafulli's exploration of bodies, intimacy and spectatorship, every exhibition extends the same conversation. Rather than presenting finished conclusions, they create situations where meaning emerges through encounter.In a city that often prioritises speed, efficiency and constant movement, spazioSERRA offers something increasingly rare: permission to linger. Even if that pause lasts no longer than the time it takes for a train to arrive, the collective hopes that moment of interruption is enough to shift someone's perspective. The station remains a place of transit, but for a few seconds, it also becomes a place of reflection.Ultimately, that's what spazioSERRA has been building all along. Not simply an exhibition space inside a railway station, but a cultural landmark embedded within everyday life, one that reminds us that art doesn't always ask us to step outside the city. Sometimes, it simply asks us to see it differently.

Interview by Passion Dzenga and Liesje VerhaveAs Afrobeats continues its global rise, Dope Caesar is emerging as one of the most exciting DJs shaping its sound and culture, but her success didn’t happen overnight. Long before the viral transitions, international bookings and sold-out shows, there were years spent studying other DJs, practising endlessly at home, learning technical precision at Vibes DJ Academy, and grinding through weekly club residencies in Lagos, one of the most demanding nightlife scenes in the world.For nearly a decade, Dope Caesar has been refining her craft in real time: playing four-night-a-week residencies, learning how to read impatient Lagos crowds, testing risky transitions live in clubs, and developing the instinct required to control a room rather than simply play songs. The viral moments people see online today are often ideas she’s been quietly sitting on for years, waiting for the right crowd and the right moment to finally understand them.Get familiar as Dope Caesar reflects on the unseen hours behind her rise, the discipline required to survive Lagos nightlife, balancing technical skill with crowd control, and why boldness matters more than perfection. As she prepares for a new chapter of global touring, she speaks on staying grounded, navigating a male-dominated industry, and understanding that true success is built long before the world starts paying attention.Recently, you’ve really broken through online. Your sets are going viral and your name is travelling globally. Does it feel like you’re in your “I’ve made it” era now, or do you still feel like you’re just getting started?Well, it’s in between. I approach life from the perspective that you don’t really know how far you’ve come until the journey has ended. Someone else is going to write that story eventually. I don’t even know myself yet. So I feel like I’ve made it because obviously I’ve grown, but at the same time I’m also just getting started because I don’t know where the story ends. It sits somewhere between those two things.And you’ve been doing this for almost a decade now, right?Nine years.Congratulations. Maybe we can go back to the beginning a little bit. What did those early days at Vibes DJ Academy look like for you?Honestly, those days felt like, “Do you even know what you’re doing?” — but you kind of do. I was already DJing before I got there, but I didn’t fully know whether I was doing things correctly. Going to Vibes DJ Academy validated everything I had taught myself through research and practice.But then another challenge came up: how do you present technical skill in a way that regular people can connect to? Because people can easily box you in as “a DJ’s DJ” or someone who should just do competitions, but that doesn’t always work on a dance floor. So it became about translating technical ability into something people can actually feel in a party environment.So it was a transition from technical skill into learning how to control a room?Exactly.What was it about the academy environment that created that shift?The tutors. They had very technical DJs there, like DJ Massive and DJ Consequence, who are some of the best party DJs in Nigeria. So you had both worlds in one space: technical precision and crowd control. You could learn different things from each person and merge them into your own style.Dope Caesar is wearing the Patta Track Top Cardigan, the Patta Acid Wash Fuchsia Purple Denim Pants, and the Patta Boxing T-Shirt.Lagos nightlife is famously intense and competitive. Did growing within that environment shape your identity as a DJ?Definitely. The real leap happened in 2022 when I started working in a club. That became my platform to really show myself. But Lagos crowds are already used to certain things. You can’t just come in and say, “This is what I do now.”So it forced me to think differently. You can do all the hard technical stuff, but how do you make simple things exciting? Nigerians are impatient — everything has to hit immediately. Timing matters. Precision matters. Lagos keeps you on your toes constantly.Were you performing for yourself at that stage, or for the crowd?At first, definitely for the club. But I also have to put myself into it because that’s why I DJ. I have a piece of myself to give people. If I remove myself completely, then something is missing. But DJing is still for the dance floor too. You can’t make it entirely about yourself. It’s about balance.How did you first enter the Lagos nightlife scene?It’s actually the craziest story. I got a random WhatsApp message from someone saying he wanted to open a club and believed in me. I genuinely thought it was a scam because I wasn’t popular at all. But it turned out to be real.The funniest part is that at the time, I had barely even been to clubs myself. I’d probably only gone out three times in my life. But I still said yes. Then I started calling my DJ friends asking what songs they played. I studied other DJs constantly, recorded sets, watched how they controlled rooms, and practiced from there.And what did that residency look like?Four nights a week. Full-time job energy.And now you’re resident at two places, right?Yeah, now I’m a resident at Mr Panther and Guest List every Saturday. The sound, the drinks, the people - everything is amazing there and it’s for the few only, you just have to be there!One thing people really associate with you now is transitions. Your sets feel very fluid and unexpected. How do you approach building them?Chaotically, honestly. Ideas just come to me and I test them out. But over time I’ve developed rules for myself: musicality, timing, key, energy. A lot of my transitions are personal challenges. Sometimes I’m literally trying things just to prove to myself that I can do them. Transitions are risky. When they work, it’s incredible. When they fail, it’s disastrous. But I enjoy that risk.Do you test those ideas beforehand or live in the club?It depends on the crowd and the environment. You have to earn certain moments. Some transitions I’ve had for years and never played because the environment wasn’t right yet. That viral transition everyone knows? I’d already been doing it long before people saw it online. It just finally reached the right audience at the right moment.What separates a DJ who simply plays songs from someone who actually controls a room?Being bold. I don’t even think DJing itself is my talent. I know how much work it took to learn. The difference is being willing to take risks. If you take risks, you gain power over the room. You can’t play safe forever. No single moment defines you anyway. You learn from the good moments and the bad ones.Dope Caesar is wearing the Patta Track Top Cardigan, the Patta Acid Wash Fuchsia Purple Denim Pants, and the Patta Boxing T-Shirt.Your career is becoming increasingly global now. How has that changed your life?It’s crazy because I’ve been to countries where I genuinely wonder how people even know me there. But at the same time, my life is still normal. I still play with kids in my neighbourhood. It’s not that deep to me. What I appreciate most is experiencing different cultures while sharing mine too. It’s very symbiotic. What excites you most about touring? The challenge. Certain regions are so multicultural. For instance, my  Amsterdam show at Melkweg had the most diverse crowd I’ve ever seen. That really challenged me because you can’t rely only on what works in Lagos anymore. You have to understand different cultures and figure things out in real time. That excites me.What’s the difference between Dope Caesar online and Dope Caesar in real life?I honestly don’t know how people perceive me online. I think people assume I’m mysterious because I wear glasses and don’t speak too much. But I’m actually very playful. Everybody around me knows I joke constantly. I’m very minimal in how I dress and move, and I think people build a perception around that. But I’m not trying to create some fake persona. I’m just myself.Your image has become very recognisable too — the shaved head, the minimal styling. How did that become part of your identity?It happened naturally. I used to grow my hair before, but during a certain period in my life I kept telling my friends I wanted to shave it off. Everyone said I’d never actually do it. Then one day I looked in the mirror and decided to do it. My sister shaved it off for me. Some people loved it, some people hated it, but I liked it, so I kept it. I never planned for it to become part of my identity. Same with the way I dress. I like comfortable clothes and sneakers. I’m not overly fashion-focused. It just became associated with me naturally.Are original productions the next step for you musically?Yeah, definitely. I want to explore it and see where it takes me creatively.The DJ space — especially in Nigeria — has historically been very male-dominated. What has your experience been like as a woman entering that space?The ecosystem has changed a lot. More women are entering DJ culture now and I love seeing it.I always tell female DJs: just do you. People are going to talk regardless. Come with your nails done. Come feminine. Come however you want and still destroy the set. DJing isn’t about physical strength. It’s mental. It’s rhythm. It’s energy. And honestly, for a long time — controversial or not — the best DJ in Nigeria was DJ Switch. But because the industry was so male-dominated, she didn’t always receive the visibility she deserved. Now things are changing. Female DJs are finally part of the main conversation.What advice would you give to young women trying to enter that world now?Practice. Practice. Practice. Stay humble. Virality is not professionalism. When hype disappears, skill is what remains. So you need to actually know what you’re doing. And don’t just follow trends because they worked for someone else. Know yourself first. Beyoncé still rehearses constantly, so what excuse does anyone else really have?Before we wrap, what’s one song that always works in the club?“All I Do Is Win.” Every single time. People complain online about DJs always playing it, but the second it comes on, everybody’s hands go up. It’s hilarious. So that makes it funny. So that’s a track that always works multiculturally, but personally? “Ozeba” by Rema. Anytime I hear that song, I lose my mind.Check out Dope Caesar's upcoming shows or music releases here.  

Interview by Liesje Verhave | Photography by Joël stay away from dante!, is one of the most vibrant sounds currently emerging from Amsterdam-Zuidoost. Since the release of his EP Duizend Volle Manen and his participation in Popronde 2025, it has become increasingly difficult to stay away from him, with a busy festival season and a headline tour now on the horizon.His dedication to his creative practice is evident in the way he expands his musical releases into larger visual and narrative worlds, as seen in the short film that accompanied Duizend Volle Manen. Literary references, endless curiosity, and a self-proclaimed nerdy fascination with storytelling are woven throughout both his work and personality.We spoke with him about the beginnings of his musical journey, his recent performance at Lentekabinet, and what lies ahead this summer.You've been releasing music since 2022, but what made you decide to create such a conceptual and narrative-driven project with Duizend Volle Manen?I've actually been making music since I was sixteen. Back then, I looked up to artists like Kanye West and Tyler, The Creator, who were incredible storytellers. Their music was about building worlds. At first, making music was more of a joke. Then, a few years later, I started learning piano and producing my own songs. That's when I began working on Duizend Volle Manen.I wanted my first major project to feel like a complete story. I was inspired by artists who built worlds through their music and wanted my debut project to feel like a world of its own.Alongside the project, you also released a short film. What was it like translating the music into a visual story?It was a completely different process. I spent years working on the music itself, but I also spent years developing the story behind it. Once the music was finished, I had to figure out how to translate those ideas into visuals. I created a detailed mood board and outlined the entire narrative before presenting it to the video team. Together, we refined the story and assembled a production team to bring it to life.The biggest challenge was making sure the visuals communicated what I already understood through the music. In my head, the songs made perfect sense, but they also had to make sense on screen. The team at Time Code Productions helped me bring that vision to life. It was a lot of work, but it was also an incredible experience.You perform under the name stay away from dante! Where did that name come from?The name comes from the Italian writer Dante Alighieri.I was reading about him and learned more about his life, particularly the fact that he wrote The Divine Comedy while living in exile from Florence. That book went on to influence literature, religion, and culture in a massive way.I found that incredibly inspiring. I wanted to incorporate his name into my artistry somehow. The "Stay Away" part is a reference to his exile from Florence, while "Dante" comes directly from him. The name became a way of acknowledging both his influence and the idea of creating something meaningful despite being pushed away from familiar spaces.You seem deeply interested in storytelling and world-building. What were you like growing up? Were you already creating imaginary worlds as a child?Definitely, my mother always tells me that when I was young, I spent hours looking through atlases and maps. I was fascinated by geography, pirate stories, space, and anything that suggested a larger world beyond what I knew.I've always been drawn to imagination and discovery. As I got older, that fascination expanded through anime. Shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dragon Ball Z, and Naruto had a huge impact on me because they created these rich, fully realised worlds.At the same time, I was discovering music. I naturally gravitated towards albums that told stories and felt cinematic. That's why projects like The College Dropout and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill resonated with me so strongly; they felt like complete experiences. I've always been attracted to worlds that don't quite exist in reality but feel real through imagination.You grew up in the Bijlmer, and it seems to play an important role in both your life and your work. What is it about the Bijlmer that continues to inspire you, and why do you think it has produced so many artists and storytellers?The Bijlmer is, in my opinion, the warmest and most colourful neighbourhood in Amsterdam. That warmth and colour are still present in everything I do. You can hear it in my music, see it in my videos, and even notice it in the way I dress and communicate. The energy of where I grew up has stayed with me.I think what makes the Bijlmer so inspiring is a combination of the environment and the people. It's incredibly green. There are parks, trees, and open spaces everywhere. Whenever I need inspiration or simply want to clear my head, I go for a walk or a bike ride through the area. There's a place near where I live called the Bijlmerweide, and every time I'm there I'm reminded of how unique it is to live somewhere that feels both urban and connected to nature at the same time.The other thing is the culture. Growing up, everyone wanted to create something. People were freestyling, dancing, acting, making music, playing football, or dreaming about performing on bigger stages. I honestly can't think of a single friend from my childhood who didn't have some kind of creative ambition. When you're surrounded by that energy from such a young age, it becomes normal. You grow up believing that creating something is possible because everyone around you is trying to do it too. More than anything, it's that warmth, creativity, and sense of possibility that continue to shape my work.You taught yourself piano and production. What drove that obsession with sound and learning instruments?It's actually a funny story because when I first started making music, I only saw myself as a rapper.I started writing raps when I was sixteen and spent about three years focusing entirely on lyrics. Then, when I was around nineteen, a friend of mine—someone a few years older—gave me some advice that completely changed my perspective, "You're unique. You tell stories in a way that feels different. If you really want to do this, you need to understand music."If I wanted to become the best version of myself as an artist and truly build worlds through my music, I needed to learn an instrument and understand how songs were constructed.Eventually I took his advice seriously and started studying the artists I admired. I realised they all had a deep understanding of music beyond simply writing lyrics. That inspired me to start learning piano and producing my own material. Looking back, that advice changed everything.Last year you participated in the Popronde and performed at the final showcase in Amsterdam. What was that experience like?It was an incredible experience. For the first time, I was performing almost every weekend. The schedule could start on Thursday and continue through Sunday, so there was a constant rhythm of travelling, performing, and adapting.Not every venue was ideal. Sometimes you'd find yourself playing in a small bar that didn't seem suited for a hip-hop show at all. But that's exactly what made it valuable.You learn how to make something work regardless of the circumstances. You learn how to create energy in a room, connect with people, and build a performance no matter where you are. Earlier that year, I had been supporting Sef during his tour. During that run, we worked with a live performance coach who taught me and the band how to be more present on stage and engage more effectively with an audience.By the time Popronde came around, I had already released the EP, so I went into the tour with a clear objective: tell the story of the project live while applying everything we'd learned.By the end of the tour, we were performing a completely different version of the show than the one we started with. When we eventually played our headline show at Paradiso, it stood above everything else. The show sold out. The audience showed so much love. We were finally able to present the complete version of the live concept we'd been developing all year. That was a very special moment.You're heading out on your first proper headline tour later this year. Will audiences see the same show, or are you building something new?We're building something new. By the time the tour starts, the next project will be out as well, which means there will be a lot of new music to work with. Because of that, the show needs to evolve.I always want the live experience to reflect where I am creatively at that particular moment. So while some elements will carry over from the previous performances, we're definitely creating something fresh for this tour.Your tour is called the “FREE SANTI”, and the character of Santiago plays a major role throughout the EP. Who is Santiago?Santiago is essentially a character based on my personality between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. That period of your life is a strange transition. You're moving from being a teenager into adulthood, and suddenly everything becomes more serious. You're learning new lessons, taking on more responsibilities, and figuring out who you are.I think all of us have a fight-or-flight response when life becomes challenging. You can either let circumstances overwhelm you, or you can confront them and try to become a better version of yourself. In the story, Santiago chooses to run. But that escape is really a metaphor. He's trying to escape unhealthy patterns, old habits, and parts of himself that no longer serve him.Ultimately, he's searching for growth. In many ways, Santiago is me during that chapter of my life.The next project is arriving later this year. Is it a continuation of Santiago's story?Not exactly. It's not “Santiago 2.0” or a direct sequel. What it is, though, is another chapter in the larger story of my life. The new project focuses much more on love, relationships, and the lessons that come with them.It's a different theme and a different stage of personal growth, but it's still rooted in storytelling.I see it as another chapter in the same book rather than a continuation of the exact same narrative.Aside from the new project, are there any performances you're particularly excited about this summer?Absolutely. I'm really looking forward to Down The Rabbit Hole. That's a huge one.I'm also excited for Into The Great Wide Open, Solar Festival, and Wildeburg. Those are all festivals I've wanted to play for a long time. It's going to be a busy summer, but in the best possible way.There are some great collaborations on the EP, including IGOR, Nnelg, and more. How did those collaborations come about?The collaboration with IGOR happened very naturally. We've known each other since around 2023. He first reached out after hearing one of my singles and suggested we make some music together. We ended up spending a lot of time in the studio and actually made enough material for an entire collaborative EP.While I was working on Duizen Volle Manen, it felt obvious to involve him. He immediately connected with "Santiago Zei" and ended up becoming the final addition to the project.He wrote his verse, added some string arrangements, and helped elevate the track. It all happened very organically.The collaborations with Nnelg and Ray Fuego came from admiration. I grew up listening to SMIB and always imagined having at least one SMIB feature on my first major project. When I was working on the song, I sent it to them and explained the vision. As someone who grew up listening to their music, having them involved felt very special.How do songs usually begin for you? Does a project start with a story, a visual idea, a melody, or something else entirely?Most songs begin with an emotion. I'll experience something, watch a film, hear a story, or connect with a character, and that creates a feeling. Once I identify that feeling, I start asking myself what its soundtrack would sound like. Then I'll sit behind the piano, find the right chords, and start building from there with melodies, drums, and rough ideas.Most songs begin as simple 30-second loops with placeholder lyrics and unfinished production. I'll listen to those ideas for days or even weeks, gradually refining them while making sure I never lose sight of the original emotion. I keep adjusting and rebuilding until the music captures exactly the feeling I imagined.Your music blends hip-hop, soul, pop, and more experimental influences. Are there any new sounds you're excited to explore in the future?Definitely. The new project already pushes me into some new territory while also going deeper into the sounds I've explored before. There's still a lot of soul music in it. There's funk, and a strong influence from the late '70s and early '80s. You'll also hear touches of reggae and dub throughout the project. More generally, though, I'm always discovering new music.If in a few years I decide I want to make a full reggae album, I'll do it. I've never wanted to limit myself to one genre. I want to follow my curiosity and let the music lead me wherever it wants to  go.People know you through your music, your visuals, and your performances, but what's something people often misunderstand about you?That's a great question. One thing I hear a lot is that people expect me to be very quiet and extremely introverted when they meet me for the first time. I understand why they think that. A lot of my work is reflective and thoughtful, and I'm definitely a nerd in many ways. I love stories, books, films, and world-building. But at the same time, I'm also very extroverted.I'm still a Bijlmer kid. I enjoy football, going to the gym, hanging out with friends, joking around, and being social. I think people sometimes assume that creative people only exist inside their creative identities. But I'm not just a musician or storyteller. I'm also just a regular person with ordinary interests and experiences.Maybe that's what surprises people the most.Finally, is there anything you'd like people to know before the tour and the next chapter of your journey begins?More than anything, I hope people come out and experience the live show.I've spent years building these stories, creating the music, and developing the world around the project. The live performance is all those pieces coming together. Between the upcoming festivals, the new music, and the tour, this feels like the beginning of a new chapter. I'm excited to share it with people and see where the journey goes next.Catch stay away from dante! live this summer at Down The Rabbit Hole, Into The Great Wide Open, Solar Festival, and Wildeburg or later this year when he takes his world on the road with the FREE SANTI TOUR.

Interview by Passion DEEZSixteen years after their last full-length release, Roll Deep return not as a nostalgia act, but as a living institution. Through generations of artists, changing line-ups and shifting eras of grime, the crew never really disappeared. Now, with Best in the Game arriving via FABRICLIVE., they're reminding everyone why their influence remains woven into the DNA of British music.For many artists, a comeback implies a period of absence. For Roll Deep, the story is different. The founding grime crew may not have released a full project together in sixteen years, but the collective never stopped moving. Members continued building careers across music, fashion, business and broadcasting, while the wider Roll Deep legacy continued to echo through every generation of grime that followed. "We never really left," says Breeze. "It wasn't like we ever sat down and said, 'We're not doing this anymore.' We've always been in contact. We've always been around each other. Making music together again just felt natural."That sense of continuity runs throughout Best in the Game. Rather than attempting to recreate a past moment or chase contemporary trends, the project feels like a reaffirmation of what Roll Deep has always represented: raw energy, brotherhood and the collective spirit that helped define grime from its earliest days. For Manga St Hilare, the return is less about nostalgia and more about perspective. "We've been here for so long," he explains. "The sound has gone through different generations, different stages, different artists. People said grime was alive, then dead, then alive again. So to still be here making music and enjoying it after all that is a blessing."That perspective comes naturally when your alumni network includes some of the most influential names in British music. Wiley, Skepta, JME, Flowdan, Tinchey Stryder, Trim and countless others all passed through Roll Deep's ranks at different points, making the crew less of a group and more of an ecosystem. Yet none of the members speak about that legacy with surprise. "This is all we know," says Breeze. "We've always been great. Everyone's always had their own thing going on individually, and then when we come together, it just works." Karnage agrees, comparing Roll Deep to a giant machine whose individual parts never stopped moving. "Everyone's got their own path," he says. "Flowdan's doing his thing. J2K's got his trainer brand. Everybody's always been active. Then, when we come together, like Voltron, it becomes something bigger."Ask any member what truly defines Roll Deep and none of them mention chart positions or records sold. Instead, they talk about brotherhood. "It's not a boy band," Breeze laughs. "Nobody put us together. We grew up together. This is family." That family dynamic remains central to how Roll Deep operate creatively. There are no complicated formulas when it comes to writing music. No calculations around who should appear on a particular track. No strategic discussions about streaming numbers. Instead, songs emerge organically. "We'll hear a rhythm and whoever wants to jump on it jumps on it," Breeze explains. "Some people might suit one track more than others. Some people might not want to be on it at all. We just want whatever's best for the team."Manga describes the process even more simply. "It's not a business decision," he says. "It's just vibes. If everyone wants to be on a track, cool. If only two people want to do it, that's cool too. We're brothers first." That spirit has allowed Roll Deep to survive where many other collectives disappeared. Individual success was never viewed as a threat to the group. Instead, it strengthened it. Roachee believes that being part of Roll Deep creates a standard of quality that members carry throughout their lives. "When you're around people constantly achieving things, it pushes you," he says. "Everybody who came through Roll Deep has gone on to do something. Music, business, fashion, whatever it is. Being around that energy keeps you accountable."Despite grime's journey into arenas, fashion campaigns and global culture, the crew remain adamant that everything starts with pirate radio. For Karnage, the pirate era remains the single most important part of Roll Deep's identity. "It was the foundation," he says. "Before social media, before streaming, before any of that. Pirate radio was where people heard us. It was where we developed."As Roll Deep describe it, pirate radio functioned as both training ground and proving ground. It taught timing, chemistry, crowd control and the instinctive understanding that still defines their music today. "Everything comes from radio," Manga explains. "The way we write songs. The way we perform. Even knowing when it's someone else's turn to come in. All of that comes from radio."Breeze agrees. "You always go back to what you know," he says. "That's the roots."That rawness remains central to Roll Deep's philosophy today. While many artists spend years polishing records for streaming platforms, the crew still think about music through the lens of performance. For Manga, grime loses something when it becomes too clean. "The songs are one thing," he says. "But when you see grime live, it's completely different. That's where the energy is." He believes this is why grime can sometimes be misunderstood by audiences unfamiliar with its live culture. "When people watch a clip online, they think they're watching rappers perform. But we're not just rappers. The energy is different. You have to be there." Breeze is even more direct. "It's called grime for a reason," he says. "It's not supposed to be polished."The crew's return arrives through FABRICLIVE., a partnership that feels almost inevitable given the shared history between grime and London's most iconic club space. Interestingly, the collaboration only happened after the music was already finished. "We had the project done," Manga explains. "The music, artwork, everything. We just needed the right home for it." That home turned out to be fabric. "They understand what we're trying to do," he says. "Some places don't always understand where grime belongs or how to position it. fabric gets it." Beyond the label itself, the venue carries symbolic weight."fabric is grime's club," Manga says. "When people around the world talk about clubs in London, they talk about fabric. Roll Deep is a London institution and fabric is a London institution. It just makes sense."Leading the campaign is B.U.N, a track built around one of the most iconic lyrics in grime history. For the crew, choosing it as the first single was an easy decision. "We wanted people to hear something instantly recognisable," says Manga. "When you hear that lyric, you know exactly what it is." The track also serves as a showcase for Scratchy, whose contributions as a producer are often overlooked. "A lot of people don't realise how good Scratchy is as a producer," Manga says. "So it felt right to come back with one of his beats and one of his most famous lyrics." The result acts as both a reminder and a statement: Roll Deep's foundations remain intact, but their creative energy remains firmly rooted in the present.Perhaps the most striking aspect of Roll Deep's return is their relationship with younger artists. Rather than viewing new generations through the lens of competition, the crew speak about them with admiration and curiosity. Manga points to emerging artists carrying the torch in their own way. "The new generation have their own energy," he says. "They respect the history but they're not trying to recreate 2003. They're trying to make their own history."Roachee has experienced the generational shift firsthand. "I get voice notes from young artists all the time," he says. "One kid told me he felt blessed just to be born and know Roll Deep. That's crazy to hear." For him, those interactions provide motivation. "The young generation give me energy," he says. "Being around them makes me want to keep writing and keep going." The influence now stretches across multiple generations. Some of the artists inspired by Roll Deep weren't even born when the crew first emerged. "It's surreal," Breeze admits. "Seeing kids who weren't alive when we started looking up to us—that's surreal."The title of Roll Deep's forthcoming mixtape carries a certain weight. Yet after speaking with the crew, it doesn't feel like arrogance. Instead, it feels like confidence built over decades of consistency. The members know exactly what they are, where they came from and what made them important in the first place. They are not interested in reinventing themselves for algorithms or chasing whatever sound happens to be trending. Instead, Best in the Game serves as a reminder that some foundations never disappear.Sixteen years after their last full-length release, Roll Deep are still operating according to the same principles that built grime in the first place: community, competition, creativity and collective energy. The format may evolve. The generations may change. But the essence remains the same. As Breeze puts it: "We wanted to keep it raw. We wanted to keep it Roll Deep."Roll Deep's influence is written into the DNA of British music. With Best in the Game on the horizon, now is the perfect time to reconnect with the crew that helped shape grime as we know it. Check out B.U.N and follow the journey via FABRICLIVE.

Interview by Liesje Verhave | Photography by Nick HeldermanFor most people, a debut novel would be enough of a creative milestone. For Xillan Macrooy, it became one part of a much larger transformation. Over the past year, the Surinamese-born multidisciplinary artist has expanded beyond the role of musician with an ambitious three-part project spanning literature, theatre and music. Beginning with a debut novel recently nominated for the Hebban Debuutprijs, continuing through an award-nominated theatre production and culminating in an upcoming album, the work traces a deeply personal journey through queerness, memory, identity and self-invention.Xillan Macrooy doesn't see these projects as separate disciplines. They're different manifestations of the same impulse: storytelling. Long before studying music at conservatory level, before performing on stages across the Netherlands, and before writing songs from a queer perspective, he was a child drawing pictures inspired by books and inventing stories to accompany them. Somewhere along the way, music became the dominant medium. The last few years have been about remembering that it never had to be the only one.At the centre of this creative expansion sits a question that has followed him throughout his life: what becomes possible when you allow yourself to be more than one thing? We caught up with Xillan to discuss storytelling, Suriname, language, queer representation, artistic transformation and why his latest body of work is ultimately about learning to let go.You recently published your debut novel, Mensen als zonnen en mensen als manen, but writing seems to have been part of your creative life long before that. When did you realise you wanted to be a storyteller rather than simply a musician?Music has been my main focus since I was a teenager. I moved to the Netherlands to study at the conservatory, and over time, music became such a central part of my identity that I almost forgot how I worked as a child. When I was younger, I moved naturally between different forms of creativity. If I read a book, I would draw something inspired by it. If I painted something, there was usually a story attached to it. I wasn't separating disciplines in the way we often do as adults. Everything was connected.At some point, I realised there was something that still felt incomplete. I love music and I always will, but when I started asking myself why I make songs in the first place, the answer wasn't that I wanted to sing. It wasn't even that I wanted to make records. The answer was that I wanted to tell stories.Once I started saying that out loud, things began to happen. People started responding to that idea. The publisher who eventually released my novel heard me talk about storytelling during a podcast and asked if I'd ever considered writing a book. It was a question I'd secretly wanted someone to ask my entire life.Writing a novel always felt like one of those dreams reserved for a very small group of people. It seemed distant. Unrealistic. But by that point I was already beginning to accept that I didn't want to be limited to a single artistic identity. I wanted to experiment. I wanted to move between worlds. I wanted to be a shape shifter.The novel began as a memoir before becoming fiction. Why did that change?Initially, I thought I was writing a coming-of-age memoir. I spent months creating timelines and mapping significant moments from my life. But the deeper I went into that process, the more I realised it was triggering things I wasn't ready to relive exactly as they happened. What I discovered was that I needed control. As a child and teenager, there were many moments where I felt powerless. Through fiction, I could become the director for once. I could decide what happened. I could alter reality without abandoning it entirely. The book became an alternate version of my life rather than a direct recreation of it.I'm very inspired by Afro-surrealism and shows like Atlanta, where the world appears familiar but something is slightly different. The rules are bent rather than completely broken. That's how I approached the novel. It's not only a story about what happened. It's also a story about what could have happened. About the versions of myself I might have become, the versions I never became, and the versions I'm still trying to become.That's why I didn't give the main character my own name. I wanted readers to understand that this was connected to my life without pretending it was a documentary. It's an alternate reality. And in some ways, that's closer to how memory works anyway. Two people can experience the exact same event and carry entirely different stories about it for the rest of their lives.Queerness sits at the heart of the novel. Why was it important to make that impossible to ignore?When I started writing, I was thinking about the stories I needed as a child growing up in Suriname. For a long time, I believed those stories didn't exist. I thought there were no books written from an openly queer Surinamese perspective. Later, while researching both the novel and my theatre work, I discovered that wasn't entirely true. There are writers who came before me. There is a queer legacy. There are people whose shoulders I can stand on. Finding that legacy made me happy, but it also made me angry.Because if those stories existed, why didn't I know about them? How different would my life have been if I'd encountered them earlier? How much confusion, loneliness and shame could have been avoided? That realisation gave me courage.I didn't want readers to wonder whether the story was queer. I didn't want the central relationships to be interpreted as friendships or hidden beneath layers of implication. The queerness is the heart of the book. It's not a subplot. I felt a responsibility to make that visible in a way I didn't always encounter growing up.The novel centres around twins. Why was that dynamic so important?Partly because I'm a twin myself. But more importantly, twins allowed me to explore the idea that there is no single way to experience queerness. We often focus on outcomes. We celebrate the moment someone comes out, finds love, becomes successful or arrives at some version of themselves. But the journey there is rarely straightforward. There is no blueprint for growing up queer in Suriname. There isn't really a blueprint for growing up queer anywhere. The twins allowed me to explore different responses to the same circumstances. Different ways of processing trauma. Different ways of finding joy. Different ways of surviving. I hope readers recognise themselves in both characters. Not because they're identical, but because they're not. That's the point. There isn't one correct way to be queer. There isn't one correct way to heal. There isn't one correct way to live a meaningful life. I think that's a lesson we still struggle with as societies. We want things to fit neatly into categories. We want a single version of the truth. But there are always multiple truths existing at the same time.Language plays a huge role in the novel. Why was it important to include Dutch, Sranan Tongo and Surinamese Dutch?That was one of the first conversations I had with my publisher. I said that if I'm writing a story about a boy growing up in Suriname, then the book needs to sound like Suriname. I wasn't interested in simplifying that experience for a Dutch audience. When I was growing up, I read books from all over the world and often had to work to understand them. Sometimes I didn't know the references. Sometimes I didn't know the words. But I still entered those worlds. I wanted readers here to experience something similar.What I love about Suriname is the fluidity of language. People move between languages constantly. Within a single sentence, someone might switch from Dutch to Sranan Tongo and back again depending on what they're trying to express.Language isn't just communication. It's culture. It's history. It's rhythm. In Suriname, multilingualism feels natural. It's alive. I wanted to celebrate that. I was also inspired by writers like Edgar Cairo, who challenged traditional ideas about how Dutch should be written and whose work embraced the reality of how people actually speak. That gave me permission to do the same.You describe language almost like music.Because for me, it is. The writing process felt surprisingly musical. I realised very quickly that language has melody. It has rhythm. It has tempo. A lot of the time, I knew a sentence was right because I could hear it. I wasn't analysing grammar or structure in those moments. I was listening. The same instincts I use when writing songs became part of the writing process. I would hear the cadence of a conversation, the flow of dialogue, the rhythm of a scene. In that sense, writing the novel didn't feel like leaving music behind at all. It felt like discovering another version of it.The novel, theatre production and upcoming album all form part of a larger three-part project. What have you learned from working across different mediums?The biggest lesson was realising how much I could trust my writing. Whether I'm writing a song, a play or a novel, storytelling remains the foundation. What changes is the medium. Theatre taught me about presence. About using the body as an instrument. About creating a moment that only exists for the people in the room that night. The novel taught me patience and depth. It gave me the space to explore things I didn't yet have the courage to write about in songs. And the album became something different because of both experiences.What's been fascinating is seeing how each project keeps influencing the others. The book inspired songs. The theatre production changed how I think about performance and even got nominated for the BNG Theaterprijs. Certain scenes in the novel gave me access to emotions I hadn't been able to reach musically before. The projects have been in constant conversation with one another.You've described this entire body of work as an act of shedding.Very much so. I had to write about a lot of things that I needed to let go of. That's one reason why I've decided to end the theatre production this year, even though there are opportunities to continue performing it. I need to move on. The project has served its purpose. Of course, there are moments of joy throughout the work, but much of it required me to revisit difficult experiences. I've learned what I needed to learn from that process.Now I'm interested in exploring joy more deliberately. Not because darkness isn't valuable, but because I've spent a lot of time there already. I want to see what happens when I direct the same level of curiosity toward joy.The album, ACT III: Time Traveler and Graver, arrives later this year. How does it fit into that journey?The album feels like a return, but not a return to who I was before. Music has been my primary medium for so long that it feels natural to end the project there. But I'm returning to it as a changed artist. I'm not going back to being a musician. I'm still a storyteller. The challenge now is bringing everything I've learned from theatre and literature back into music. Making sure those experiences remain part of the work. The album is probably the most shape-shifting project I've ever made. It moves between languages, sounds and perspectives. It's deliberately resistant to being placed in a single box. That feels important to me. For a long time, people wanted clear definitions. They wanted to know exactly what kind of artist I was. This project is my way of saying I don't want to choose.What excites you most about the future?Change. I've always been fascinated by transformation. Being a shape shifter isn't about abandoning previous versions of yourself. It's about carrying them forward while continuing to evolve. I think people are often afraid of change, both individually and collectively. We want certainty. We want stability. But I find change exciting. This project feels less like an arrival and more like a beginning. For the first time, I feel like my vision and its execution are aligned. The work looks the way I imagined it. It feels the way I imagined it. Now I want to see what happens next. I want to keep experimenting. I want to keep surprising myself. And most of all, I want to keep telling stories.Mensen als zonnen en mensen als manen is available now. The final chapter of Xillan Macrooy's three-part project continues later this year with the release of his debut album ACT III: SON. To introduce the final chapter of his project, Time Traveler and Graver will release a double single. Before that, audiences have one last chance to experience the award-nominated theatre production "A coming of (r)age ritual" live during its final performance. 

Words by Passion Dzenga | Photography by Olive GilsonBefore we discovered KINGH's DARE TO DREAM EP, we caught up with the London-based artist to talk about identity, ambition, faith, and building a creative universe on her own terms. Born in the UK, raised in Italy, and now back in London, KINGH's journey sits at the intersection of cultures, sounds, and disciplines. From working alongside Shy FX to directing her own visuals, she's an artist committed to honouring her vision while creating space for others to see themselves in the process. At a time when many are questioning what's possible,  DARE TO DREAM arrives as both a statement and an invitation. One rooted in belief, self-trust, and the understanding that when we share knowledge, inspiration and opportunity, we all grow. Read on as KINGH reflects on creativity, community, trusting the journey, and the power of daring to dream.You were born in the UK, raised in Italy, and now based in London, your music feels shaped by both places. How has moving between cultures influenced the way you see yourself as an artist?I’ve always felt in between worlds. It gives a unique perspective. Growing up between British and Italian cultures taught me that there isn't just one way of understanding life. I've always been influenced by different sounds, different ways of communicating, different energies. I've learned to embrace all the various parts of myself. My roots naturally feed into my music and the way I create.The title DARE TO DREAM feels almost like a manifesto. What were you dreaming about when you wrote it, and what did you have to overcome to allow yourself to believe those things were possible?At its core, DARE TO DREAM is about allowing yourself to imagine a bigger version of your life. I believe anything is possible. Ambition and drive have always been at the essence of who I am, so in many ways, the title has always lived within me. But something I had to focus on was total surrender and trust. Trust the timing, trust the process, and trust that what's meant for me won't pass me by.You describe the song as being about giving yourself permission to want more. Why do you think so many people struggle with that, especially creatives?Creatives spend a lot of time putting themselves and their work out there, which can make you second-guess yourself. Doubt is a part of being an artist. But your power lies in your uniqueness and in leaning into it. I felt a real shift when I realised that the more I embrace who I am, the more I can channel.There's a sense of optimism running through the record, but it doesn't feel naïve or escapist. How do you balance ambition with the realities of trying to build a creative career?Building a creative career comes with challenges and uncertainty. I've worked hard and made sacrifices to get myself here, but I am here. Times are uncertain and the world can feel like a scary place these days. If my music can help people believe a little more in themselves and what's possible for their lives, that's important to me. I focus on creating a feeling of possibility and aspiration. My job is to stay connected to myself and the reason I started. Belief keeps me moving forward, but trust keeps me grounded. I'm surrounded by people who understand and support what I'm building, and that's gold.Your collaboration with Shy FX feels like an interesting meeting point between generations and scenes. How did that relationship first develop, and what did he bring out of you creatively?Some of my early demos reached Shy and he invited me into the studio. We connected straight away. We have similar tastes and found we naturally gravitate towards a lot of the same sounds. He understood my story and encouraged me to dive deeper into myself. He helped me learn to trust myself more.Shy FX is known for creating music that connects deeply with sound-system culture. What did working with him teach you about songwriting, production, or trusting your instincts?Working alongside Shy, I’m a student every day. He rarely stresses and trusts that things reveal themselves when they’re ready. The way he approaches not just music, but life, is different from anyone I’ve ever come across, and that’s what sets him apart. He watches how people listen and move to music, and instinctively knows what grooves will connect with them. Being around that has taught me not to overthink, and to be led by my instincts.The production on DARE TO DREAM draws from rare groove and street soul traditions. Were those sounds already part of your musical vocabulary, or did this project push you into new territory?Thanks to my parents, I was naturally exposed to an eclectic range of music, but I always resonated most with sounds that felt raw, soulful and real. With this project, I was able to dive deeper into those influences and explore them more fully. It felt very natural. Like reconnecting with and deepening sounds and emotions that were already within me. A big part of my collaborative relationship with Shy is talking about and sharing music. When we first started working together, we'd have listening sessions where he'd introduce me to records and artists I'd never heard before. I call him the Human Jukebox. The way he absorbs, understands and stores music is unlike anything I've ever seen. There wasn't a better person to go on this journey with.The Street Soul sound had its roots deep in club culture. What are some of your favourite hits from the sound?Too many gems to mention... From the music that came out of the Manchester scene, like 5th Of Heaven, to the more well-known ones like Loose Ends and Soul II Soul. Anything that carries authenticity and connection.You've worked across music, film, fashion, and creative direction. Do you see these as separate disciplines, or are they all part of the same creative language for you?I see them as different expressions of the same thing. For me, creativity isn't really separated into categories. Whether it's music, film, or fashion, it’s all world-building. Each medium allows me to communicate something slightly different, but they're all intertwined, and I am the anchor.You directed the video for DARE TO DREAM yourself. What interests you about storytelling through visuals, and how important is creative control to you?Visuals have always been a huge part of how I think. I went to film school and I've always been a visual artist too. I see the songs whilst I write them. It all comes from the same place and gets channelled through different mediums. Creative control is everything to me. As artists, we work with sacred energy and we are responsible for honouring the message. We can't play with that.London has a long history of artists crossing between different creative worlds—music, fashion, art and film. Do you feel part of that tradition, or are you carving out something entirely your own?London has always been special because of that crossover, which is one of the reasons I came back. I think every artist is constantly trying to find their own language and build their own world. I'm inspired by that space and mentality, but I'm ultimately focused on building something that feels authentic to me. I value feeling free to expand into whatever feels right.There's a growing conversation around artists needing to be multidisciplinary just to survive. Do you think being able to move between different creative fields has become a necessity today?I think it depends on the person. Not everyone needs to do everything. But I do think having a broader understanding of creativity is valuable. For me, moving between disciplines feels natural because that's how my mind works. But it comes from genuine curiosity and instinct.Your music carries a strong sense of faith, mindset and belief in possibility. Where does that optimism come from?Some things you can’t explain, you just know and feel.  I have always been driven by something bigger than me, and that’s what keeps me moving forward. Looking back at the version of yourself who first moved to London, what do you think she would make of the position you're in now?I think she'd be proud. She had a lot of dreams and a lot of belief, but she couldn't have known exactly how things would unfold. I think she'd be excited to see that I'm still following the things that mattered to me back then. I would definitely tell her to relax.The EP is called DARE TO DREAM, but once you achieve one dream, another usually appears. What are you daring to dream about now?I am constantly stepping into new versions of myself, so I'm excited by the idea of expanding the world I'm building and creating music that reflects where I am now. At the moment I'm focused on growth, new material, and continuing to evolve creatively.Beyond streams, followers and industry milestones, what would success actually look like for KINGH five years from now?Success would be having the freedom to create at the highest level without limitation. To continue making meaningful work and to still have the ability to keep channelling and connecting with people.If somebody discovers your music through this EP, what do you hope they understand about you after listening from beginning to end?I hope they feel immersed in a world. I hope they feel a sense of connection. I write about my life and the layered experience of being human, with all its ebbs and flows. I hope they feel encouraged to lean into their essence, like I am on my own journey. I hope they discover the power of committing to themselves. I hope they dare to dream.If you've got love for music that speaks to purpose, possibility and authenticity, make sure you spend time with DARE TO DREAM. Whether you're chasing your own ambitions, navigating uncertainty, or simply looking for something real to connect with, KINGH's latest project offers a reminder that growth begins with belief. Get familiar with KINGH and step into the world she's building. DARE TO DREAM is out now.