Chino Amobi

Born to Nigerian parents and based in Virginia, USA, Chino Amobi – alongside his counterparts, Congolese-Belgian, Nkisi, and Portuguese-South African, Angel Ho – forms NON: a collective of African artists, and of the diaspora, using sound as their primary media, to articulate the visible and invisible structures that create binaries in society, and in turn distribute power.

Key releases, such as the critically acclaimed full length debut Paradiso, delivered via UNO NYC, followed up from the vital Airport Music for Black Folk released on NON, which presented a radical perspective on contemporary electronic music and impressions of the airport as an international space and yet a totally Eurocentric & Western manicured experience, in addition the Izlamic Europe collaboration with Rabit, all weaving music and politics in a way other artists of his generation didn’t and don’t dare, exemplifying his strengths in providing unified themes and subversive insight to the wider consciousness.

It’s no push to see and hear echoes at this level of grassroots, autonomous agency and concerted organization in early 90s UR or in the way grime made its first, viral moves in the mid ’00s.

On his latest album Eroica II: Christian Nihilism, Chino Amobi – an artist and musician with Nigerian roots who grew up in the US American South with a love for classical music – concocts his assemblages from sacred chorales, industrial textures, scratchy spoken word, and trap beats. Grounded yet seemingly otherworldly, the songs retain an existential unease, even in their more accessible moments. There's no promise of salvation here, rather a liberating interplay of contradictions: “I love beauty, I am a nihilist, but I love beauty.”