London-based composer and pianist Tony Njoku’s path to creating deeply beautiful, occasionally confounding modern classical and experimental music has been far from linear. Rather than attending music school or a conservatoire, he first started making his own tracks hunched over a laptop, churning out club-focused beats built for moving dancefloors. Over the years, he began to strip away the drum machines and synthesisers, leaving behind just a piano, effects and a wealth of recording knowledge. The resulting music in his latest EP, Last Bloom, is a singular, experimental and defiant take on a genre historically dominated by white men.
His Sunday Mix is an expression of his disparate influences – there’s floating, warm padded ambient and classicism played alongside frenetic IDM and industrial. Lean back and listen.
Where are you today? Currently in my flat in Golders Green, London… just chilling.
What: Some modern classical like Nils Frahm, Minua and Jóhann Jóhannsson, “experimental” stuff like Klein, Lyra Pramuk and Gaika, and a lot of rap like Playboi Carti and JPEGMAFIA.
What’s your ideal Sunday? I’d be in a cottage somewhere out of town, making tea from the leaves I just picked in the forest and baking a chocolate cake of some kind.
And what’s your ideal soundtrack to it? Here, My Dear by Mavin Gaye.
How do you like to unwind away from music? Music’s still my main sanctuary so I stay in it as much as possible. But when I do want some time away from it, I do some sort of physical activity. Usually boxing or yoga.
Describe your Sunday mix: When I listened back to the mix the main word that came to mind was hypnosis. The tracks in here just seem to pull me into a meditative state; I easily get lost in the textural and repetitive qualities the tracks possess. From sludgy, dense synth drones to hypnotic ambient guitar meanderings, to tracks where the space between notes commands just as much presence and urgency as the walls of sound that follow, it all brings me a lot of joy.
Essentially the mix is a culmination of some of my favourite artists and tracks both of the moment and of all time. I thought it be good to start off with track of mine, BIAFRA, just to set the tone. With that track, my intention was to create a sonic environment that embodied my sort of emotional response to experiencing the natural elements in eastern Nigeria. Feelings of awe, romance, fear, love, tension, excitement, anger and nostalgia spring to mind. For this mix, I tried to follow suit with other tracks that seemed to fit energetically.
Sunday Mix: Tony Njoku
Sunday Mix: Tony Njoku
London-based composer and pianist Tony Njoku’s path to creating deeply beautiful, occasionally confounding modern classical and experimental music has been far from linear. Rather than attending music school or a conservatoire, he first started making his own tracks hunched over a laptop, churning out club-focused beats built for moving dancefloors. Over the years, he began to strip away the drum machines and synthesisers, leaving behind just a piano, effects and a wealth of recording knowledge. The resulting music in his latest EP, Last Bloom, is a singular, experimental and defiant take on a genre historically dominated by white men.
His Sunday Mix is an expression of his disparate influences – there’s floating, warm padded ambient and classicism played alongside frenetic IDM and industrial. Lean back and listen.
Where are you today? Currently in my flat in Golders Green, London… just chilling.
What: Some modern classical like Nils Frahm, Minua and Jóhann Jóhannsson, “experimental” stuff like Klein, Lyra Pramuk and Gaika, and a lot of rap like Playboi Carti and JPEGMAFIA.
What’s your ideal Sunday? I’d be in a cottage somewhere out of town, making tea from the leaves I just picked in the forest and baking a chocolate cake of some kind.
And what’s your ideal soundtrack to it? Here, My Dear by Mavin Gaye.
How do you like to unwind away from music? Music’s still my main sanctuary so I stay in it as much as possible. But when I do want some time away from it, I do some sort of physical activity. Usually boxing or yoga.
Describe your Sunday mix: When I listened back to the mix the main word that came to mind was hypnosis. The tracks in here just seem to pull me into a meditative state; I easily get lost in the textural and repetitive qualities the tracks possess. From sludgy, dense synth drones to hypnotic ambient guitar meanderings, to tracks where the space between notes commands just as much presence and urgency as the walls of sound that follow, it all brings me a lot of joy.
Essentially the mix is a culmination of some of my favourite artists and tracks both of the moment and of all time. I thought it be good to start off with track of mine, BIAFRA, just to set the tone. With that track, my intention was to create a sonic environment that embodied my sort of emotional response to experiencing the natural elements in eastern Nigeria. Feelings of awe, romance, fear, love, tension, excitement, anger and nostalgia spring to mind. For this mix, I tried to follow suit with other tracks that seemed to fit energetically.
