The siren is a sound that pollutes the surrounding environment. It’s an unwanted noise designed to distress and put you on high alert. But when deployed in the right hands, it becomes a cultural weapon to shock and disrupt the status quo. For Manchester-born duo Space Afrika’s Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid, sounds culled from sirens, static and even riots carry an unmistakable charge. Recontextualised, they create an affective dimension where tense and concrete forms morph and mutate freely through murky clublands, creating a strange and beautiful environment that embodies the lived experience of the city.
Inspired by the visual and sonic aspects of industrialism, the duo makes music that alludes to these surroundings. and 2021’s -and also the duo’s visuals, which feature monochrome architectural photographs of Inyang and Reid’s surroundings, with Inyang in their native Manchester and Reid in Berlin. “We’re paying homage to these suburban environments,” Reid explains. “We’re showing the limits of those structures and trying to break them down at the same time.”
