Space Afrika is a musical duo based in Manchester and Berlin. It creates expansive and distinctly urban soundscapes fused with ambient music, Detroit techno and even vestiges of Sheffield’s IDM music of the 1990s. Project protagonists Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid are friends who spent 20 years listening to music together before they formed Space Afrika. Among its various influences, Space Afrika’s music is also informed by the industrial architecture of North West London.
The online music publication Pitchfork gave Space Afrika’s latest album – the 2021 release Honest Labour – an 8 out of 10 rating. “They tempt fracture, embrace distortion, and emphasize delay,” writes critic Hubert Adjei-Kontoh. He compares the work to Wim Wenders’ films Wings of Desire, at the start of which the angel played by actor Bruno Ganz hovers from apartment building to apartment building and from subway station to subway station, like a radio perceiving the thoughts of all the people resident there.
