Variables (LP)

"I've been focused on who I am in my music, but now I'm exploring where I am," Alfa Mist says. "I'm asking: how did I get here?"

This is the journeying question that underpins Alfa's fifth album, Variables. Traversing luscious, big band swing, head-nodding boom-bap rhythms and yearning vocal melodies, the record is expansive, soulful and moving, in both body and spirit. On Variables, his second release for ANTI-, Alfa achieves his most fully-realised, expressive musical work to date, coupling his keen ear for looping memorably emotive piano melodies with intuitive grooves and a free-flowing jazz improvisation.

Since the release of his first full-length project Nocturne in 2015, Alfa has established himself as one of the UK's most focused, in- demand and distinct musical voices. He has worked with the likes of Jordan Rakei and Tom Misch. Artists look to him for his unique blend of intimate bedroom production and expansive jazz group orchestration, since Alfa is yet to be boxed into a specific genre. His music spans everything from hip-hop beat-making to producing for artists such as rapper Loyle Carner, composing neo-classical works for the London Contemporary Orchestra, and reworking tracks from composer Ólafur Arnalds and pioneering jazz label Blue Note.