Un-Muting by Satch Hoyt

"This record is not an album but a diagram, a blackground score for a people who have never stopped dancing. Instruments exiled into the vitrines of empire, their voices stilled by taxonomic theft, now murmur and hum again. This is restitution by vibration, and the sounds you hear refuse to be forgotten, to be fixed, to refuse to die. You won’t find Western time signatures here; you’ll find time folding, spilling, catching fire. His compositions bespeak an afro-sonic-philo-sophy, more drastic than gnostic. These desperate times call for desperate pleasures."

- Tavia Nyong'o

Un-Muting documents Berlin-based, Ladbroke Grove-born artist Satch Hoyt’s ongoing project of un-muting historical African instruments held in Western museum collections. This album features Un-Muting Beyond Misspelt Borders, a composition originally commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary, in which Hoyt continues to challenge the colonial legacies of these objects through his concept of ‘sonic restitution’.

The project began with a recording session in October 2023 at the British Museum in London, where Hoyt was granted access to a selection of African instruments from the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Without written scores, Hoyt responded directly to the instruments' physical and sonic presence, recording their sounds in a live session. These recordings were then developed further in Hoyt’s studio, blending African and Western instruments from his own collection.

Records by artists; editions shaped by close listening. Distributed by Honest Jon's.