- A personal journey through UK funky, soul and West African sounds.
- In 1324, Emperor Mansa Musa ventured out from the kingdom of Mali to embark on a 4,000 mile pilgrimage to Mecca. He gathered poets, scholars and architects from around the world to come back to Mali and enrich the empire with influences and ideas from other cultures, making the already great empire even greater. To find inspiration for Textures his debut album, South London DJ and producer Hagan embarked on a similar voyage across his home country of Ghana, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa, in order to enrich an already impressive discography. The architects and inspiration he sought out however, were not for building temples or icons, but for crafting rich, percussive music. By threading amapiano, gqom, UK funky and highlife together across 11 vibrant tracks Hagan, crafts a global voyage of sound and develops into an electronic music jack-of-all-trades in the process.
Previous Hagan releases, like 2020's Waves EP were equally dance floor-oriented but occupied a distinctly urban space. On Textures there's an added distance to the music, which is more expansive, almost windswept, like the empty sprawl of a desert. On intro "Kora Song (Sonix)," fluttering koras thread themselves through the cracks of a girthy bassline, painting a rural, hilly landscape, while Jali Bakary Konteh's delicate gasps steal the show. The rallying, orchestral highlight "Royal Jama" samples a real-life jama (where a group forms together to perform some chanting), a shot of adrenaline with energising chanting and trumpet playing from Prince Saka. It's the most organic sounding track on the LP, thanks in part to how the sections were recorded outdoors in Ghana, with no protection from the wind. There is a distinct but unplaceable rawness.
Hagan takes care to acknowledge all of his all of the various ideas and cultures that go into his music, with densely layered African instrumentation and vocal spots that tell stories from his past. "Welcome To Ghana" is an all-access tour through through the country's gritty underbelly and corrupt elite: "When Ghana go be like America / We no go kill them beg for visa," ponders Bryte, caught between the rural freedoms and economic entrapment that come with life in sub-saharan Africa. He pays homage to South Africa's influence on him with the amapiano swagger and tribal groove of "Sise Ntweni," a bustling fusion of post-apartheid clubstyles.
Though it's a survey of African sounds past and present, Textures is also a heartfelt and personal reflection on family and faith. "Pray For Me" sees Ayeisha Raquel reaching towards the heavens—"Teach me how to pray," she implores over sunny guitar licks and a UK funky backdrop, her gorgeous falsetto increasing in intensity with the instrumentation. The track pulls the LP's spiritual undertones to the forefront, ending with a recording of Hagan's grandma dissecting the Bible's book of Psalms. His musical origins—playing drums at church—has left him with a grand, almost ceremonial approach to most of the music he makes. "The rhythms that I learnt in church, I try to replicate in the tracks that I do now," he explained. "In my church, the praise of worship is very upbeat and it's got an Afrocentric feel to it."
In that interview with Africa In News, Hagan also spoke about how Textures was written through the lens of Ghanaian fishermen. "When the fishermen actually go out to sea, the conditions change in terms of the waves, the current and so on, just like I introduce really hard basslines. So this mirrors how conditions change in my music which I would say is very genre fluid."
Through these rhythms that swoop across the stereo spectrum and come in and out of earshot, merging flavors from all across the continent, Hagan has made something of a love letter to African music that has only made his own music more original, personal and powerful. Before Textures, Hagan was "making the drums and bass the focal point of [his] productions." Now he has a newfound penchant for luscious melody and new subtleties that transport listeners to new locales. By venturing out of the United Kingdom to explore his roots, Hagan has accrued an empire of future-facing African sounds, each slap of a talking drum or pluck of a kora embodying pan-Africanism at its most potent.
Tracklist01. Kora Song (Sonix)
02. Pray For Me
03. Royal Jama
04. Welcome To Ghana
05. Pull Up
06. Sise Ntweni
07. Heart
08. My Love
09. Textures
10. Telha
11. Outro (Baffour's Son)