Listen to LNDFK’s playlist marrying electronic and orchestral sounds

Welcome back to Selections, a series of artist-curated playlists from those in the know.

Having released music officially since 2016, LNDFK is no neophyte to the experimental scene and has shared the stage with the likes of Mndsgn and Crack Magazine cover star Kamasi Washington over the years. After a breakout year in 2019, 2021 saw the Italian-Tunisian artist release two acclaimed singles – Don’t Know if I’m Dead or Not and How Do We Know We’re Alive (ft Pink Silfu) – which came to epitomise the jazz and neo-soul counterpoints in her debut album Kuni (2022), released under Brooklyn-based independent label Bastard Jazz Recordings.

This 20-track playlist, described cryptically by LNDFK as “a moon or a button”, is a journey both morose and joyful, classical and contemporary, encapsulating the dichotomies of her artistry. The moon, an emblem of the mystical and infinite, is reflected in tracks such as Sven Libaek’s Surfing Through The Birds, while the distinctly Italian brand of romantic idealism in Piero Piccioni’s Amore mio aiutami acts as a warm blanket of familiarity, anchoring her to the temporal world of her hometown, Naples.

“Classical music, Brazilian music and jazz have a boundary that I can’t clearly identify as distinct, at least in terms of phrasing,” she says of her Selections. “Jazz and abstract glitch music feel identical to me; they share a rhythmic improvisational matrix that makes them similar. If orchestral music and soundtrack music are the moon, electronic music is like a button, a knob. From afar, the moon and the button seem like the same element. I am trying to capture that element in my new music.”

Alongside perfecting her new sound this summer, LNDFK will be performing Kuni at Riad Wave festival on 17 August at sunset.