The fan in the far right corner of your room spins at high speed on its swivel. The curtain drifts halfway up the pastel yellow wall.
Despite the manufactured breeze, your room swelters. Some kids in the gum and maple arched street below your room are playing hop scotch on the chalk engraved pavement. A silver CRT Panasonic TV is playing midday television re-runs of Sesame Street on low volume. Some older kid’s laughs echo down further and the soft and empathetic sounds of threetwenty’s separate from the noise, balances in the air. The thick presence of nostalgia washes over your face at this moment.
As the older kids get closer so does a softer natural breeze that leaks into your room. You stick your head out the window, ‘Fruit’, blares louder, in a stretched out and relaxed new jack swing style, that floats tranquility into the atmosphere. It carries heavier kicks, a luscious groove and tastier hooks that brush the canopy overhead in a musical harmony that feels like the trees are breathing the loose melodies from singer Ivana Nwokike herself.
The words “What are you loooooking forrrrr? What are you searching forrrr?”, ring like bells in your mind as the reflective ‘what are you looking for’ scatters and bounces off the brick walls and metal terraces skirting the avenue. The water droplets from your neighbour watering her flower pots dangling from above mimics the percussive plinks and sultry synth chords from ‘lamp onto my feet’.
As the cool droplets caress your cheeks, the sweet smell of soil and fabricated petrichor marinate the air, instantly displacing the thick blanket of heat. A fueled sense of confidence and brightness imbues your soul as ‘say it’ clicks over on the kid’s stereo. Ivana’s lyrics are determined by this point in the album. Her infusion of an emotive vindication slices into her angelic hooks, which feel like a visual and aromatic mirage in this milieu.
By the end of the album the whole neighbourhood is leaning over their window seals and balconies and people are pouring on the street. Both ‘undo’ and ‘redo’ radiate this impermanent serenity with a neo soul candour as the sun punctures rays through the foliage above and down on the gyrating gatherings below.
separate from the noise is a love language. A language tangled within the warm and cascading falls of the delicate vocals from Ivana Nwokike revelling over her counterpart, Filip Hunter’s, production. A duo, moulding love, harmony and purpose into small moments, outliving their sonic bounds and seeping into the tissues of your heart.
Words by badbitchbenny