Alpha Mist

Vinyl Discography (complete):

Biography:

Alfa first taught himself to make beats as a schoolchild in East Ham, London, before discovering jazz through the sampling of hip-hop by producers such as Hi-tek, Madlib and J Dilla. He continued to evolve, teaching himself to play the piano by ear as a means of dissecting the harmonic intricacies of these records, gradually forming his own production style of head-nodding rhythms combined with the directness of jazz improvisation, all tied together with a pervasive sense of melody.

“There’s no access to jazz where I come from,” Alfa says. “I never would have gotten to it without finding those hip-hop records and trying to understand them.” What followed was a period in the 2010s where he dropped some of his first full-fledged tunes on Soundcloud and connected with a community of like-minded musicians, including longtime collaborators Jordan Rakei, Tom Misch and Barney Artist.

Along with musicians Kaya Thomas-Dyke, Emmavie and Dornik Leigh, whom Alfa met at university, he quickly built his own network around London’s burgeoning jazz scene of the mid-2010s. “London is so important to me,” says Alfa. “Everyone here is busy and it’s so normal that I don’t even feel like I’m busy anymore. I try to get where I’m going, but it’s not hectic.”

This sense of kinetic pace mixed with a confident stillness is deeply felt in Alfa’s music. 2015’s Nocturne was his first solo full-length project, a collaborative venture showcasing his ability to shift production styles to accommodate the likes of artists like Misch, Rakei, Emmavie and Thomas-Dyke. “That album was about true collaboration, working equally toward a shared goal,” says Alfa.
Self-released on his Sekito label—as have all of his records to date—Alfa quickly established a prolific work ethic with the debut of a new project, 2nd Exit, in 2016 with musician Lester Duval. Their self-titled album and 2019’s Tangent EP saw Alfa take a more prominent role as MC, showcasing both his lyrical talents and production prowess. “Rapping is more of a tool than a pursuit,” he says. “It’s like an instrumental choice for the song. I don’t rap about everything because not everything needs it.” But when he does, as on “If You Wouldn’t Mind,” his baritone meanders playfully through vignettes of glimpsing characters and musings on relationships.

In 2017, Alfa’s breakthrough album Antiphon was released. By bringing his compositions to a band, rather than largely producing them himself as he had on Nocturne, he set a thematic precedent on the eight-track record, interspersing conversations with his two older brothers about the value of family among his lush acoustic arrangements. The album’s YouTube stream has since racked up over 7 million plays, and millions more on Spotify, demonstrating how Alfa’s blend of improvised mood music can reach far beyond a perceived jazz audience.

Continuing the focus on family, 2019’s structuralism featured sample conversations with Alfa’s older sister about how we formulate our identities among ourselves. Alfa captured the essence of the immigrant experience of floating between worlds through compositions like “Jjajja’s Screen”—referring to his inability to communicate with his non-English-speaking grandmother when she lived with the family—and he artfully reflected the bleak optimism of city life on the Jordan Rakei feature “Door.”

Collaborative projects have continued to flourish, too. 2020 saw the re-release of Alfa’s 2014 pensive soul project with vocalist Emmavie, Epoch, while the same year also saw the debut of a new duo with drummer Richard Spaven as 44th Move—their self-titled EP that delves into the fertile space between the dancefloor and the headphone experience. In a beautifully unguarded moment, 2020 also saw Alpha release his debut solo piano EP, On My Ones. “I wanted to strip it back and let the piano take center stage,” he says. “This EP shares my love for my first instrument.” Ultimately, this insatiable creative process only serves to reflect Alfa in all his complexity. “I want these different aspects to exist in the world because I am all of them,” he says. “When people listen to them, they get to see exactly who I am.”

Alpha’s latest effort, 2021’s Bring Backs , finds him taking on new challenges. The record marks his first release for the Anti- label and is also the most detailed exploration of his upbringing in musical form. The album’s nine tracks of groove-based intricacies, lyrical solipsism, and meandering fragmentations are tied together by a remarkable poem written by Hilary Thomas that captures the sensual realities of building community in a new land.
The album’s title also references an aspect of a card game Alfa would play as a child, where the winner would only be decided after going through an extra round without being re-entered. It’s a sentiment Alfa finds and echoes in his own experiences of success. “I live in this constant ‘bring-back’ state where I can never really be sure that I’m doing as well as I am,” he says. “When you grow up where I am, you live in a sense of instability – you can do well for a while, but that can change, you know that’s always a possibility.”
It's perhaps a state of mind that could change, but until it does, it only serves to motivate Alfa's constantly searching musical spirit, a spirit that will undoubtedly continue to surprise and amaze.