why we love this

A velvet nightscape emits brooding grooves and lucid speech. As sight adjusts to a dim glow, elements step in and out of a lone streetlight: ice-cold synth swells, syncopated rhythms, and all sorts of textures that fill the air with an expectant density.

about the record

Okokon’s sophomore album, Offering, delves deeper into the lush and cinematic soundscapes he first explored on his debut, Turkson Side. While primarily working in visual arts, Africanus Okokon—who records under his surname—bridges his artistic practices in Offering, using masterful collage techniques to create his most personal work yet. The album defies easy categorization, blending influences from dream pop, avant-garde folk, psychedelia, trip-hop, and dub, with traces of field recordings seamlessly woven throughout to form a cohesive whole.

Offering finds Okokon confronting and negotiating the sudden and unexplained death he experienced in his childhood, with the complex emotions of that loss serving as the main inspiration for the album. This ambiguity permeates the work, as Okokon seeks to explore the ambivalence and uneasiness of contradicting emotions existing simultaneously—an idea alluded to in the album’s title. This theme is further reflected in the album's structure, with each track inhabited by different narrators offering varying perspectives on the same events. The result is a hauntingly beautiful album, with recurring themes of death, growth, sacrifice, and spirituality woven throughout.