“Rushing it kills both the plant and the music. The beauty is in waiting with it.”
Ibukun Sunday makes music to “meet people in their intensity and guide them toward peace.” Lagos-born, now in north London, he’s spent years translating that intensity into ambient work built from West African rhythmic sensibilities, deep drone, and a trained violist’s ear - a sound cultivated across releases for Phantom Limb and its Spirituals imprint, and most recently on this year’s Olúsín [Worshippers], a record about faith, devotion, and the silence between notes.
His Seeds Mix, Rooted in Shadow, starts somewhere darker and stays there. Sunday works to four private principles - time in seasons rather than bars, rhythm that stays steady, sound and harmony, structure. Field recordings - leaves, water in a cave, soil being turned - get time-stretched into pads rather than backdrop.
It’s also Seeds Mix 13, a number with its own reputation. Sunday’s not fighting the omen.
You’ve said rushing kills the plant and the music both, and the beauty’s in the wait. Does this shadow side require a different kind of patience, or is it the same wait either way?
That’s where the best music lives, I think. In Seeds Mix 13. The track where you didn’t fill every space, where you let the silence be heavy, where the light only comes through for 4 seconds at the end.
You said environmental sounds tell the plants’ growth within the music, not just set the scene. Was shadow itself treated like a collaborator here, similar to water or wind?
Yes. 100%. If water is the pulse and wind is the sway, then shadow is the soil.
I didn’t just “set the scene” with darkness in Seeds Mix 13. I let shadow do work, the same way I let water and birds do work.
Water gives rhythm. Wind gives motion.
Shadow gives weight. It’s the low end, the sub, the reverb tail that never fully decays. It’s what makes the light matter when it hits. Without shadow, that burst through the trees in your photo would just be bright. With shadow, it’s revelation.
It’s Seeds Mix 13. Thirteen’s got its own shadow reputation - unlucky, left off buildings, uneasy. Do you think this was fate’s intervention or just how the numbers landed?
Mix 13 carries a shadow. Skipped floors, crossed fingers, the “bad omen” story we all learned. But look at the image again: trees growing out of stone, light forcing its way through. That’s 13 to me.
You’re originally from Lagos - does shadow mean something different there, given the heat and light, than it might somewhere greyer and colder?
Yes. It means something completely different. Shadow in Lagos and shadow in North London aren’t the same plant.
Lagos shadow is never quiet. It’s danfo horns softened, music leaking from a bar, rain hitting a zinc roof but you’re dry underneath. Shadow holds the noise instead of killing it.
So shadow in Lagos feels generous. It’s not “dark.” It’s cool.
So what happens when you carry both? You end up with a different kind of patience.
Lagos taught you: shadow is a place to rest and still grow.
London taught you: shadow is a season to endure and still grow.
Your music leans on the silence between notes as its own kind of faith. Does tending a plant call for that same patience, waiting on something you can’t rush or fully see?
Silence is faith. When you let a note ring and then don’t play the next one, you’re saying: “I trust that what we’ve planted here is enough for now. I trust time will do the rest.” That’s devotion. That’s Worshippers. Rushing it kills both the plant and the music. The beauty is in waiting with it.
Olúsín [Worshippers] is out now.
Tracklist:
Ryan J Raffa – Sound of the Mountains
Henrik Meierkord – Skogsgränsen
Ibukun Sunday – Last Earth Ibukun Sunday – Distance / No Turning Back
Ibukun Sunday – Edge
