“The way everything is run, from the music industry down through everyday interactions, [NON seeks] to challenge that,” Chino Amobi told us earlier this year, shedding light on the ethos behind NON WORLDWIDE, the label and collective that includes Amobi, fellow DJs and producers Angel-Ho and Nkisi, as well as a growing roster of sound artists from Africa and the diaspora.
NON was founded in 2015, and in this relatively short lifespan, has already made significant strides in challenging the music world’s status-quo via weaponized ambient and club mutations. According to their mission statement, the collective aims to use sound to decolonize dance music, and “articulate the visible and invisible structures that create binaries in society, and in turn distribute power.” Truthfully, NON is more like a movement—unified by a common political ideology and operating inside a fluid, hyper-modern framework—than a traditional music label. In the wake of Brexit and Trump’s unthinkable win—where the livelihoods of many minorities are now threatened in new and terrifying ways—NON’s mission to highlight invisible power structures and elevate artists from marginalized communities feels more critical than ever.
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In 2016, NON unleashed over a dozen compelling releases.You’ll find the label’s discography below, along with quotes from the artists about the stories behind their records. Much like the year itself, NON’s output was always unpredictable and provocative.From the cool, cybernetic new age of Dedekind Cut’s $uccessor, to the unnerving ambient environments of Chino Amobi’s Airport Music for Black People, and Moro’s elemental, rhythmically tenacious San Benito, this was some of the year’s most thrilling and fiercely original music—and a testament to the power of collective resistance.
1. Moro – San Benito (1/22)
“On the San Benito EP (San Benito de Palermo is a black saint used by the church to convert Afro-descendants to Catholicism in colonial times), I wanted to talk about the erasure of Afro-descendant influences on Tango music. Since most of the slave routes that came to Argentina would form a triangle from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Caribbean and The Rio de la Plata region, I wanted to guide myself with the musical DNA that remained through all the distance—the clave. The first chains from “Libres” start doing that clave rhythm before the kick drum shows up.
I decided to name whatever music came from that philosophy Ramba, especially because I didn’t want other people to label it as another genre, something that doesn’t share the same background and that gives this erasure battle a special voice. In this EP, I wasn’t thinking of making it easy or simple to understand—if you are curious about “simple” Ramba you can check the last edit I put out called “JKY“. You can also mix “Arrepientanse,” which might seem like a total mess, with any other tracks that share the same clave and they will work perfectly. I usually do this live.”—Moro
2. Mhysa – Hivemind (2/16)
“Hivemind reflects me starting to feel good about myself as a black queer femme, about where I’m from and who made me. It’s about being feminine and searching for power there rather than trying to “fit in” in white spaces or be “one of the boys” in the space of electronic music.
Many of the songs on the EP are covers of tracks that I grew up with in Prince George’s County, MD and the DMV, that speak to how I’ve been feeling recently about the world but maybe couldn’t find the words to say myself. All of the songs I chose to cover for the EP are intense and vulnerable and speak to social issues. “Feel No Pain” is a cover of the Sade song and the lyrics are about people feeling despondent and needing music just to survive in the violent conditions they’ve been dealt. The song asks us to make music they can dance to so that they’re not weary and maybe see a future past this really dark point (something I think we really need right now).
I love catering to my folks and black women and femmes, especially in a space currently (not historically) dominated with content for cis white men. I produced the EP in my house in Philly and a lot of the sounds I use are based on sounds I’d hear outside my window or walking down the street. I also use a lot of smashing and breaking sounds. I was thinking a lot about protests and frustration and how often when black people get upset in protest they are accused of rioting, and how it’s valid that you might want to break everything in spaces where you can’t own anything and my own desires to break shit.”—Mhysa
3. Isis Scott – King Isis (2/22)
“King Isis is a collection of edits I did for an art show I put together in 2015 called Disruption. Chino came across my SoundCloud and asked if I would like to put out an EP on NON with those selected songs. I’ll find an acapella or song that describes the feeling I’m in, then I’ll highlight moments that depict that. I’ll then record it in one take and whatever comes out is what it is. My work process is very raw and in the moment, I never edit after I record.
The record is about self expression and disruption. With “Beautiful $ea,” my favorite track on King Isis, I expressed the need of wanting happiness while still battling an anger or sadness not dealt with. But it’s not always that deep, sometimes I just like a song and want to fuck it up.”—Isis Scott
4. Angel Ho – Emancipation (3/10)
“I wanted to make tracks that became an emancipating, unifying experience for everyone listening,” Angel-Ho said upon the release of Emancipation, a four-track EP featuring FAKA’s Desire Marea. “It is for our relative black queer trans communities, I want us to exist without compromise and to be brave everyday.” If Emancipation is to be understood as a means to rally the troops, it’s decidedly more call-to-arms than Kumbaya. Like its explosive artwork, the EP’s tracks are volatile and chaotic, evoking sci-fi dystopias and the combustion of weaponry—its sounds seem to erupt outward in every direction. Here, Angel-Ho continues his inclination for carving infectious pop shapes out of raw noise: gun-cocks, broken glass, hissing turbines, and screaming car FX all feature in the release’s frenzied sound design. Whether in the blistered remix of Keyshia Cole’s “Let It Go” or the bristling dynamism of highlight “CLOCCCC”, Emancipation shows there’s no source material Angel-Ho can’t spin into a hook.—Jonathan Patrick
5. Chino Amobi – Airport Music For Black Folk (3/11)
“I was reading a lot of documents and books in Berlin that some of my friends referred me to and thinking about how brown and black people are perceived in post 9/11 airports. I recorded the majority of it at Janus HQ under the auspices of Dan Denorch.”—Chino Amobi
6. The Movement Trust – Asemic Swing (3/24)
The Movement Trust’s nine-track EP Ansemic Swing might be the most mysterious collection of tracks NON has released so far. Firstly, we know very little about the duo that released it—their names are Bekelé Berhanu and L.R. Bedman, they’ve previously self-released music under the name SILKBLESS, Berhanu delivered a fearsome mix on the Berlin imprint Janus last year. Secondly, unlike the bulk of NON releases—which generally come with lengthy accompanying texts—we know almost nothing about the process and motivations that inspired this EP. The moody, subterranean dance cuts that make up Ansemic Swing are threaded with anxiety and littered with corroded landscapes and drifting, echoic vocals. The release’s glitchy, claustrophobic textures and throbbing percussion conjure images of some post-apocalyptic afterparty—a sweaty, shadowy scene where dancers shuffle across the freshly scorched earth, and Ansemic Swing soundtracks the end of the world.—Jonathan Patrick
7. Mya Gomez – INMATE (3/30)
“INMATE is a synthesis of my traumas, past and present. The hardship that really inspired this EP was when I was on my way to London and was detained in Yarlswood, an immigration removal center, for 10 days until I was allowed an escorted deportation back to Los Angeles.
My working process is very odd I think, I still feel so much like a child but with refined political beliefs, so I think I try to execute my music with that child-like mindset of always being unpredictable and maybe a bit anxiety-inducing. While working on INMATE I was very much in love and like Chino Amobi says, “You kind of kill yourself when you love.” My melodies kind of served as love letters and my drums served as an outlet for my frustration.”—Mya Gomez
8. Chino Amobi + Rabit – Izlämic Europe (5/11)
“On April 30, 711, Islamic leader Tariq ibn-Ziyad landed at Gibraltar and by the end of the campaign most of the Iberian Peninsula (except for small areas in the north-west such as Asturias and the Basque territory) were brought under Islamic rule. This campaign’s turning point was the battle of Guadalete, where the last Visigothic king, Roderick, was defeated and killed on the battlefield.”—Chino Amobi and Rabit
9. Violence – A Ruse of Power (8/25)
“The songs were produced at various periods over several years. Lyrically, themes range from meditations on the relationship between man and recorded history to looking at different American archetypes through a lense of (attempted) equanimity. The structure of the songs come from various attempts at reconciling the relationships between emotion, melody, and percussive, atonal effects, both historically and personally.”—Violence
10. FAKA – Bottoms Revenge (10/21)
“Bottoms Revenge is an expression of many things. On a sonic level, it was a deep search for a sound that best reflected our spiritual reality. The result was something we called Ancestral Gqom-Gospel, a sound that is as complex, intricate and intersectional as the EP’s subject matter. Bottoms Revenge is a story about an army of femme ancestors who live in us, and their fight to claim back their power in the material world through us.”—Faka
11. Dedekindcut – $uccessor (11/1)
Fred Warmsley’s debut full-length as Dedekind Cut transforms the ersatz spirituality of classic new age into something much more genuine, and searching. Warmsley called $uccessor “the birth of something new”, and while the album is hardly his first release as an ambient producer, nor even his first as Dedekind Cut, it feels very much like the artist’s coming out party. Resonant environments like vast, synthetic prairie lands blanket $uccessor, as do icy surfaces and shimmering, metallic timbres; it’s a meditative, cinematic and uncannily beautiful record. Earlier this year, Warmsley was asked if he thought there was a social/political component to ambient music. He responded, “In my case there is”, and then lamented how people of color are often minimized or outright forgotten in the history of ambient music. By turns funereal and triumphant, $uccessor is a shot across the bow at those who seek to downplay the role of African and Afro-diasporic artists in electronic music.—Jonathan Patrick
Additional reporting by Michelle Lhooq
