Seigfried komidashi, AKA the sockless adventurer, has charted a palpably remarkable trajectory, from school practice-room experiments to avant-garde sound bricoleur to established voice within London's jazz ecosystem. His most recent artistic evolution reveals a deliberate shift from spontaneous improvisation toward calculated intentionality.
What komidashi terms his chaotic patchwork methodology functions as a form of critical assemblage — consciously fragmenting and reconfiguring potent cultural signifiers: the revolutionary defiance embodied in Fela Kuti's political activism, the radical poetic interventions of Audre Lorde, and the subversive literary strategies deployed by Ishmael Reed. This deliberate fragmentation serves not as mere aesthetic choice but as political praxis. Through non-linear narratives and non-Euclidean rhythmic structures, komidashi constructs a metacritique of contemporary nihilism, refusing the seductive comfort of post-ironic detachment while acknowledging what he bluntly terms "the fact that the world done been fucked."
As we navigate the various corridors of leopard under black sun !, komidashi speaks on a radical praxis of memory-as-resistance: simultaneously interrogating notions of Black masculine identity, disavowing the commodification of desire in late capitalism, and demonstrating how ancestral wisdom might yet provide counterhegemonic strategies for a generation trapped between apocalyptic foreclosure and the hollow promises of technological salvation.
Congratulations on your exceptional new album, leopard under black sun ! Having known you since our school days, it’s been amazing to witness both your personal and artistic evolution. This release feels like such a compelling expansion of the komidashi-verse. How do you feel knowing it’s about to be released into the world?
Thank you so much! The sound has definitely changed a lot since those school days for sure (laughs). I feel good, especially having worked for so long on the project and being in that headspace, it’s really freeing to be able to let go and move on, as well as to be able to share that sonic space and encourage people to dive in and go on a crazy journey for 40 minutes.
You call yourself a sockless adventurer. What's the story there? I feel like it says something interesting about how you move through the world and make your art.
I wish it was that glamorous but, to be honest, I literally didn’t wear socks for a long time during school and went on lots of random side quests. I guess there’s maybe a commentary on my life there but I’ll leave that for the biography.
At the all-boys secondary school we both attended, the music department was in a modern block, visually and conceptually separated from the daily academic grind. Looking back at my time there, I’ve realised that the practice rooms were where I found refuge from the performative hypermasculinity of the school environment. I'm wondering if you have felt something similar all. How did the experience of being a young Black artist in that particular space influence your creative approach ? I'm especially interested in your journey from the more chaotic and caustic energy of your earlier Soundcloud rap experiments to the profoundly intentional artistry of your current voice.
I think that the music rooms were definitely a place of refuge: there was a certain air of freedom that being allowed in those rooms granted. For me, I think I took and still take that performative masculinity so often demanded of boys, and especially black boys!, as a challenge. Like, how can I push what the bounds of masculine means but also move like a bad bitch? So those music room sessions always felt like a way of expressing that desire to break both literally and metaphysically from the rest of the school and those expectations.
We were super lucky to have such a chill head of music who’d let us eat Chinese, bump SoundCloud beats, and I remember he once gave me an oboe over the summer holidays and said, “I’ll see you in orchestra next term.” To have the chance to fuck around and experiment with different instruments and space to relax in such an otherwise hostile environment was a lifesaver.
I feel like those early experiments were just that — playing with and searching for pockets of sound and space, a more reactive process of making music. Whereas now I’m definitely striving for more intentionality with my work, trying to create spaces that allow for that freedom, and perhaps demand it too, whether it’s crafting a narrative, story-based work like black icarus; or more sonically intuitive thematic work, like with this new project, leopard under black sun ! That early emphasis and need for experimenting from those school days remains at the crux of all my work. I’m definitely still playing with sounds, learning new shit every time I open up Logic, though honestly more times I have no idea what I'm actually trying to do until I’ve done it.
We were super lucky to have such a chill head of music who’d let us eat Chinese, bump SoundCloud beats, and I remember he once gave me an oboe over the summer holidays and said, “I’ll see you in orchestra next term.” To have the chance to fuck around and experiment with different instruments and space to relax in such an otherwise hostile environment was a lifesaver.
I feel like those early experiments were just that — playing with and searching for pockets of sound and space, a more reactive process of making music. Whereas now I’m definitely striving for more intentionality with my work, trying to create spaces that allow for that freedom, and perhaps demand it too, whether it’s crafting a narrative, story-based work like black icarus; or more sonically intuitive thematic work, like with this new project, leopard under black sun ! That early emphasis and need for experimenting from those school days remains at the crux of all my work. I’m definitely still playing with sounds, learning new shit every time I open up Logic, though honestly more times I have no idea what I'm actually trying to do until I’ve done it.
The title of your latest album, leopard under black sun !, is an adroit blend of both ancient symbolism and Afrofuturist imagery. Could you elaborate on how the duality of past and future manifests throughout the LP, specifically in tracks like creatures of habit and the diegetic album closer family traditions, Pt. 2?
I think it speaks to the non-linearity of time, the necessity of all elements of time existing in both simultaneously and distinctly. I explored this through samples, voices, sounds, feelings from the past written in an ever shifting present shaped by an idea of the future in a chaotic ever continual amalgamation of learning and unlearning, writing and rewriting, mixing and remixing. For the first time, I started off with the title and from there everything else slowly fell into place where it needed to be, so perhaps it's part of that idea of nonlinearity again, starting at the end and playing with structures within that space.
family traditions, Pt. 2 feels like it brings the black icarus black sun arc to a close, pt 1 (the first song on black icarus) opens with a prayer from my grandpa’s 97th birthday and pt 2 with prayers from his 100th, so it feels like a marking of a passage of time and of a legacy being built and rebuilt through generations. Songs like creatures of habit, southpaw and hourglass mark particular instances in the past, spoken from a future knowledge of the present. It all bleeds and shifts into one sonic space, I guess.
family traditions, Pt. 2 feels like it brings the black icarus black sun arc to a close, pt 1 (the first song on black icarus) opens with a prayer from my grandpa’s 97th birthday and pt 2 with prayers from his 100th, so it feels like a marking of a passage of time and of a legacy being built and rebuilt through generations. Songs like creatures of habit, southpaw and hourglass mark particular instances in the past, spoken from a future knowledge of the present. It all bleeds and shifts into one sonic space, I guess.
I like how you have described your sound as a "chaotic patchwork”, it really captures the essence of your music: the dynamic collision of tezetas, highlife, avant-pop, and so much more. How do you bring these different worlds together in the studio? I'm especially curious about how your Yoruba heritage suffuses into the soundscapes you create.
I think that all my influences inflect themselves differently, sometimes it’s the feel of a sound or the energy of it, and that perhaps is the collision, this crazy mix of different cultures and sonic references being explored in this space I’m creating. The Yoruba heritage exists both within and outside of me, and I feel like having that spiritual pull of ancestors past and present, that energy and drive really pushes me to keep striving and creating knowing that I’m speaking to and for and with elders who are looking out for me.
The poignant diegesis within the poetry on the track black unicorn is complimented beautifully with the Audre Lorde sample from A Litany For Survival, perhaps the most affective from her eponymous poetry collection. What drew you to her work, and this poem in particular? Her writing about identity and belonging feels especially relevant now, in this age where we're all trying to figure out who we are online and offline. How do her perspectives influence the way you think about these themes in your own work?
Reading Black Unicorn really changed the way I approach writing poetry. The way Lorde constructs her poems is incredible, from her prose to the symbolism and imagery of her work. For me, reading both Zami and Black Unicorn gave me a new sense of focus and vulnerability when writing, it really highlighted where writing can go, kind of like how a Coltrane solo shows you where jazz can be taken and the limits it can push. Her work was the first poetry I read and was like oh shit, I get this, so I always refer back to her poems as a point of reference, as a guide to really writing poetry.
In scylla + charybdis, you use Greek mythology as an allegorical framework to explore intensely personal themes around isolation and self-preservation. Lines like "love or fucking lust why take the risk" and "love often absconded at first and lust [her late replacement]" to me suggest a discursive tension between desire and lack, between romantic yearning and the ostensible impossibility of its fulfilment. To me the lyrics here feel so raw compared to your earlier works. What prompted this shift in your artistic voice? Was there a specific moment when you felt compelled to engage with these themes more directly? Do you have any fears about how your vulnerability on this album as a whole will be perceived?
I think it’s that intentionality that provoked that rawness and vulnerability on the record, I really wanted (and perhaps needed) to push myself to both let go of things and also to accept where I am. I’ve always been obsessed with greek mythology ever since I was a kid, so the scylla and charybdis reference was at first a tongue in cheek line, but kinda felt more and more apt to describe this feeling of being caught between two evils. Having a relationship end and taking time to hold space for the feelings is perhaps what prompted it, needing to learn and grow from past mistakes, and also to let go of them too. In today’s age that tension between desire and lack, between love and lust is often weaponised as a way of getting people to buy things, to pay subscriptions, to feel like the only way out of it is to cede to market forces; so for me I was trying to make a record that couldn’t really be consumed in that same way and instead play with that tension sonically. In terms of how it will be perceived, I guess I just want people to feel it, what or how they feel is out of my hands so it’s way too late to be scared now (laughs)!
Can you tell me about your experience in Florida with Kahil El'Zabar? I keep thinking about what it must have been like under the mentorship of someone with such deep connections to the traditional jazz modalities — from Pharoah Sanders to Nina Simone — and I'm curious about the conversations you had, the things he taught you that stuck with you. Was there a particular moment or lesson that shifted how you think about your own music?
Being in Florida was amazing ! To be in community with so many amazing artists from all different disciplines and really have an opportunity to just live and breathe art for a few weeks was honestly incredible. Working with Kahil was life changing, his dedication to his craft, that energy of having someone who’s been around some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. He really pushed us all as musicians and as people to create and channel that Black Radical Tradition of art and jazz during our rehearsals and final performance, and I think being the only brit around americans really showed me how much american art inspires my sound and approach to music. I’m forever grateful for the opportunity and learnt so much during my residency at ACA so it’s a blessing to be able to have done something like that.
A moment that stood out was during the final show we did, the energy and atmosphere was insane and to be able to share the work we’d created and the space with the other artists on the residency was magical, and at one point I felt Kahil kinda push the tempo as if to say, “let’s see what you got kid” — it made me realise that there’s levels to this shit and really take stock of the company I was in, how lucky I was to be in communion with a living legend, and that really helped underline the importance and the beauty of community, of creating space and weaving in and out of time through sound. That and seeing him deadass practise for 7-8 hours a day at 70 years old, definitely made me shake up my shit and actually start practicing more!
A moment that stood out was during the final show we did, the energy and atmosphere was insane and to be able to share the work we’d created and the space with the other artists on the residency was magical, and at one point I felt Kahil kinda push the tempo as if to say, “let’s see what you got kid” — it made me realise that there’s levels to this shit and really take stock of the company I was in, how lucky I was to be in communion with a living legend, and that really helped underline the importance and the beauty of community, of creating space and weaving in and out of time through sound. That and seeing him deadass practise for 7-8 hours a day at 70 years old, definitely made me shake up my shit and actually start practicing more!
I really enjoyed your previous album black icarus (2022), particularly the afro-futurist abstractions in the accompanying visual project featured in the Dark Echoes exhibition. I must say though your work in leopard under black sun ! feels like it's reaching for something new, there's still that interrogation of cultural memory as an emancipatory agent, but here you're pushing into more experimental territory. What inspired this evolution? I'd love to hear about the moments or influences that pushed you to explore these new directions.
Thank you! I feel like with this new project it’s definitely a more mature and considered work, I’ve been through a lot over the past few years so I guess those life lessons and experiences bleed into the work and really helped me to focus in on exploring those themes of love, lust, desire and acceptance. Black icarus felt like an interrogation of the journey of self acceptance and rejection of preconceived notions of black excellence through a white gaze, whereas I think that leopard under black sun ! is an attempt to relocate and find a sense of identity, of belonging within this crazy world, and to really lay a foundation of creative and sonic praxis to further explore and channel the revolutionary ideals that inspire my work.
This album felt like a return to earth, a grounding of sorts after how esoteric and space-y black icarus was. It felt like going back to Nigeria to celebrate my Grandpa’s 100th birthday with so many members of extended family I hadn't seen in years, like that pull of a love that can’t be attained, like the final coming of spring after a cold dark winter, a homecoming that saw me spiritually reconnecting with ancestors both living and dead.
This album felt like a return to earth, a grounding of sorts after how esoteric and space-y black icarus was. It felt like going back to Nigeria to celebrate my Grandpa’s 100th birthday with so many members of extended family I hadn't seen in years, like that pull of a love that can’t be attained, like the final coming of spring after a cold dark winter, a homecoming that saw me spiritually reconnecting with ancestors both living and dead.
Both lanaire aderemi and Bibi Isako Bisala have been part of your musical journey for a while now - from black icarus to this new album. What's it been like working with them? How have your creative relationships with both deepened over time?
It’s been amazing! We’ve been working together for years before so it’s always a pleasure to have them collaborate on a project, especially with how amazingly talented both of them are. With lanaire we’ve known each other since 2018, and to have her poetry on the tape is a blessing, with how pertinent and revolutionary her words are; and with Bibi with that voice I'd be crazy not to have her on the tape! I think it’s always been easy, sometimes it’s just a vibe that they bring or the verse just works on so many things that it’s honestly more difficult working out where I’m gonna put it than actually trying to make the song with them.
In your 2021 Fred Perry interview you mentioned Fela Kuti's Coffin for Head of State as the one record you'd keep forever — an album where personal anguish transforms into a radical political statement, where Kuti literally brought death to the oppressor's doorstep, carrying his mother's coffin to the Dodan barracks. In dancing in the archives, lanaire aderemi's words "blood on the uniforms of military heads of states" seem to resonate Kuti's unwavering repudiation of state violence, while her call to "pause and rewind to our grandmother's times" suggests a different kind of weaponry, the inheritance of resistance strategies passed down through generations. How do you see your role as a musician in this lineage of resistance? Particularly in relation to aderemi's four tenets outlined in the track, from abolition to consciousness-raising, what responsibility do you feel artists currently have in carrying forward these grandmother-taught lessons of fighting oppression?
I try to carry those tenets with me wherever I go, I did an essay in final year on the importance of matrilineal narratives in west African storytelling, so I think it’s always been something that has influenced my sonic practice both consciously and subconsciously. Having lanaire voice those ideas and thoughts was an aligning of stars, she sent over the poem and it perfectly fit the revolutionary ideal that I was trying to explore throughout the album, and put it far better than I ever could!
I guess that in terms of the responsibility of artists to carry those lessons, sometimes the act of creating in and of itself is a revolutionary act. That’s not to say that all art is revolutionary, but the act of telling our stories, of pushing boundaries within music is something that helps serve as the foundational bedrock of resistance. For me, personally, I feel like the lessons taught by our ancestors are crucial to my music making process and fuel the drive to keep creating music that serves as an act of resistance, that challenges the current patriarchal and capitalist systems of our modern world.
I guess that in terms of the responsibility of artists to carry those lessons, sometimes the act of creating in and of itself is a revolutionary act. That’s not to say that all art is revolutionary, but the act of telling our stories, of pushing boundaries within music is something that helps serve as the foundational bedrock of resistance. For me, personally, I feel like the lessons taught by our ancestors are crucial to my music making process and fuel the drive to keep creating music that serves as an act of resistance, that challenges the current patriarchal and capitalist systems of our modern world.
Your work as a whole moves between jazz traditions, civil rights-era literature, and postcolonial thought, from Coltrane to Baldwin, from Lorde to the mu'tafikah subplot in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo. Yet we're living in an era where many young people feel increasingly disconnected from the possibility of a better future, replacing radical anti- oppressive discourse with nihilistic apathy and post-ironic ennui. Do you ever worry that your deep engagement with these traditional forms and revolutionary voices might partly stem from a certain hauntological melancholia, a collapse between an imagined, more hopeful past and our seemingly foreclosed future? Or do you perhaps see your work as actively reclaiming and reanimating these traditions for contemporary resistance?
Damn that’s a tough question ! I guess that it feels like there’s no other choice when we’re faced with a system that appears to have already collapsed but is still viciously dictating so many aspects of our lives, yet we seem powerless to stop it. I think that the past offers us lessons that can help guide us towards a better future, these traditions of jazz, the revolutionary blueprints left by Baldwin, Lorde, Spillers, Davis, Achebe, Bey, Shakur; that furious experimentation and willingness to break the boundaries of contemporary thought, that I think is what can and will save us.
I think that the hauntological melancholia that you refer to is perhaps a symptom of the fact that the world done been fucked, and we’re still searching for a way to break free from the chains of subjugation that capitalist structures necessarily impose upon us. I don’t think it’s a worry as such, more so it’s a call to keep resisting and to keep striving and pushing for a better future with the knowledge and wisdom of those that came before us. Whether we define that as a reclaiming or as a continuation or as an elaboration of that past work is a matter of preference and metaphysical linguistic debate beyond my pay-grade, but the most important thing for me is to never take the past, present and future for granted, to work within this non-euclidean and non-linear spacetime to both acknowledge the past and create a better future through sonic, visual and spatial art.
I think that the hauntological melancholia that you refer to is perhaps a symptom of the fact that the world done been fucked, and we’re still searching for a way to break free from the chains of subjugation that capitalist structures necessarily impose upon us. I don’t think it’s a worry as such, more so it’s a call to keep resisting and to keep striving and pushing for a better future with the knowledge and wisdom of those that came before us. Whether we define that as a reclaiming or as a continuation or as an elaboration of that past work is a matter of preference and metaphysical linguistic debate beyond my pay-grade, but the most important thing for me is to never take the past, present and future for granted, to work within this non-euclidean and non-linear spacetime to both acknowledge the past and create a better future through sonic, visual and spatial art.
You’ve collaborated with a multitude of phenomenal underground musicians over the last few years. Are there any artists from the London scene or the Northern scene you experienced whilst out in Sheffield that you have found particular inspiration from that you’d like to shout-out here?
I’ve been super lucky and blessed to be able to be in community with so many incredible artists during this musical journey ! I’m incredibly grateful to Otis Mensah, Yung Yusuf, Powerdrill, Ashley Holmes, MYNA, Zillch, Tommo, Jackie Moonbather, KATZ, all of the heads in Sheff who really helped me to start making music and supporting me in this journey, to Youniss in Belgium, to all of the ACA 194 cohort, to all the London heads, lanaire, Bibi, Jaed, Sav, Ratiba, Selassie, Dan who have shown so much love and support since I’ve been back.
Thinking more about your experience of London, in your Fred Perry interview you also said that you'd choose to spend an hour with John Coltrane if you could meet anyone from history. If you could grab dinner with Coltrane in London tonight, where would you take him?
Ooooh probably Icco’s in Goodge Street, I fucking love that place ! Either that or probably try and whip something up for dinner, maybe something middle eastern or east asian?
Tell me about linking up with the Spinny Nights label, it feels like the consummate fit in terms of where your music is headed. What's it been like working with them on this release?
It’s been a blessing, definitely different but really nice to have the support and someone on my ass setting fixed deadlines and making sure I actually drop the album (!!), as well as having a label believe in the project and be willing to show up and show out to make sure it gets heard!
Looking to the future, what can we expect from seigfried komidashi? Do you have any gigs or projects lined up that you’re particularly excited about?
Currently I’m in research mode, doing a lot of reading, listening, feeling, very much sketching out ideas and motifs for a new project keep away from the pulpits ! I’m slowly working on. I’ve been rustling around in the archives and found some old punk joints as well as playing with some more jazz and soundscapy joints, so it’ll definitely be a shift sonically but still very much focused on the experimentation and usual chaotic bs as always (laughs).
There’s a beautiful project by Otis Mensah called Come Beautify The Night that I’m playing sax, flute and some drums on coming soon that I’m super proud and blessed to be a part of, as well as Youniss’ new album Good Effort! that I’ve got a feature on which I’m super gassed for, so some new exciting bits this year for sure!
There’s a beautiful project by Otis Mensah called Come Beautify The Night that I’m playing sax, flute and some drums on coming soon that I’m super proud and blessed to be a part of, as well as Youniss’ new album Good Effort! that I’ve got a feature on which I’m super gassed for, so some new exciting bits this year for sure!
