Ahead of her second album ‘the color of rain’, out 22nd May via Drink Sum Wtr, aja monet frames its heart as devotion to sincerity, “the impetus of the work is presence, a deep divine love for a sense of being.” It’s a grounding both spiritual and embodied, a practice of attention rather than being categorised as opposition, yet aja acknowledges that the association of resistance emerges “out of the necessity to assert your humanity and a sense of presence." The tragedy, she notes, is that audiences often latch onto the struggle rather than the source; “It's unfortunate that is the takeaway a lot of people tend to have, rather than to assert one's love of self and dignity.”

There is something ingenious orchestrating a Ney flute and a steel pan speaking to one another: one carries over 5,000 years of history; the other a recent addition to the world’s instruments, a radical emergence from post-colonial Trinidad through discarded oil barrels transformed into one of modern music’s most emotionally resonant sounds. Within the upcoming Superorganic event Ancient Sounds x Future Focus at Rich Mix 22nd May, Alain ‘Fusion’ Clapham has curated a space where these instruments are not separated by geography, generation or chronology, they are collaborators.