EF1 by Eku Fantasy

Originally meant to be a one-song, cloud-based collaboration, Olugbenga Adelekan (Metronomy) and Gareth Jones (Jumping Back Slash) found a musical chemistry that has blossomed into a longer creative partnership, their methods defying distance with the help of Ableton and messaging services.

The duo completed an album’s worth of material over three weeks in the small town of Knysna on South Africa’s Garden Route. It was their first meeting in real life and Gbenga’s longest time in Africa since his teen years. Everyday experiences seeped into the music –
getting haircuts while listening to barbershop chatter as local music played on the radio, swimming in the lagoon after long studio days, driving around Knysna running errands and observing the unfolding news of drought and political turmoil in Cape Town and beyond.
The search for truth and beauty within the unsettling urgency of our current climate informs lead track ‘Living On The Outside’, which blends icy, pristine synths and electric strings with radical political questioning to striking effect. The track tackles micro-aggressions within race
with its powerful lyrical focus on concepts of otherness, home and belonging, repeating the question ‘are you willing to assimilate?’

‘Within Yourself’ takes you on a voyage beyond the stars, glimmering with cosmic, space-age synths and warm electronic beats, its empowering lyrics reaching for self-love hidden in the universe within. Similarly, ‘In Her Lifetime’ grapples with the ethereal. Bursting through clouds into crystalline brightness, it’s a song sung as a defiant declaration of hope,
expressing the possibility of change present within every moment, joyously repudiating the pessimism of the current age.

Closer ’Celestine’ is an intense and atmospheric story of a love that overtakes. As Gbenga describes it: “Some people cause the merest flicker to your magnetic field while others are gravity wells pulling every sinew of flesh, every synapse in your brain towards them.” This
thrilling rush of finding meaningful connection is sung against a backdrop of grimy synths and distant drums straight out of a used future.

EKU FANTASY IS JUMPING BACK SLASH AND OLUGBENGA ADELEKAN (METRONOMY)