Emeka Ogboh is a Nigerian artist, whose works contemplates broad notions of listening and hearing as its main focus. He works primarily with sound and video to explore ways of understanding cities as cosmopolitan spaces with their unique characters. His sound recordings also consider the history and aural infrastructure of cities, Lagos and Nigeria in particular.
“Lagos is a city that is never silent, so when I first started living in Berlin I found it hard to sleep because it was quiet. In Lagos we live every day with, I stopped calling it noise, this is really like sound. The city composes. This really captivated me to work a lot with sound.”
The record is released on A-TON, the experimental sub-label of legendary Ostgut Ton.
The club has been under lockdown and Ogboh is showing a new sound installation that explores the sounds of the red-light district in the Nigerian city.
Like his sound installation AYILARA for Berghain’s main floor Funktion One speakers in the current STUDIO BERLIN exhibition, Beyond The Yellow Haze contains a veritable atonal orchestra of honking, motors, sound systems, sidewalk sales pitches and various sonic artifacts of Lagos’s Danfo bus stations and beyond.
Lagos is a city that is awash in sound. Public markets, street conversations, and the din of traffic are the backdrop of the album, beautifully married with rumbling drum lines and ambient synths.
Ogboh’s compositions reflect both the Nigerian city’s soundscapes as well as the artist’s increasing immersion in electronic music since moving to Berlin six years ago.