“I really did want something Afrofuturist, and the whole name of the project TECHNIFRO-185 is me imagining this planet that I would go to, to really let out all of these feelings, and it helped to let out these feelings somewhere else not on earth.”
TECHNIFRO-185 is not only the name of Melbourne artist Nū’s debut EP, but also her planet for escapism. It’s one that sonically glows with textured and warping moments. Code is Nū’s instrument of her choice terraforming her planet with a melodic topography.
“Some of these songs I just picked a scale and then asked the computer to pick random notes at different times and some of these melodies were developed through that process. So yeah, live coding is super fun.”
These sounds lap upon the shores of an Afrofuturist landscape, soft melodies caressed by tempered drum patterns and canopies of bilingual harmonies, hymns and samples. TECHNIFRO-185 is a home for healing, its very existence created in renewal, diasporic memory and grief.
‘Angel’ rises like a sun, shedding light on bodies of water on TECHNIFRO-185, with licks of saxophone sliding by Nū’s angelic harmonies. Posturing drum patterns ripple, distorting stagnancy and reflecting secrets to grief and memory. ‘Ibekal’ echoes Amharic vocals and samples, like a breeze through trees in TECHNIFRO’s forests, quickly becoming a full wind with Nū’s heavenly sonants, also in Amharic, emboldened by a rolling rhythmic drum. Closing the EP is ‘Joyful’, an ode to Sister Act 2’s ‘Oh Happy Day’ and ‘Ode to Joy’, a reflective and cathartic piece.
“I actually did set out to make something happy and Afrofuturist and hopeful. Turns out it's hard to make happy songs, and sometimes, you know, your body just needs to let go and process certain things. So I would always be improvising and then things would come out and I couldn't hold back. I had to just let it be.”
Words by badbitchbenny