More about: KOKOROKO

Under a full moon in an abandoned seaside town is not your typical place for recording a debut album, but that is exactly where Kokoroko’s upcoming LP Could We Be More was created. During the lockdown of 2021, the eight-piece Afrobeat band escaped their homes in London and headed for Eastbourne, searching for space, peace, and inspiration, and found themselves in a small studio near the coastline. 

It was during a late-night walk on the oceanfront when the moon was full, that the band found their sound for the upcoming album, and more specifically, discovered the inspiration for one of its leading tracks, ‘Age of Ascent’. “We stood in silence,” bandleader Sheila Maurice-Grey says of the moment. “Then went back to the studio to record it….you can hear that within the music. The sounds of the water, the sound of stillness and peacefulness.”

Anyone familiar with Kokoroko’s music will not be surprised to hear that their compositions come from such powerful and tender moments. Drawing from the West African traditions of Afrobeat and Highlife, the band’s joyful music is complex and beautiful, while also potent and commanding. It’s the kind of music that forces you out of your seat to dance. The group’s name — which means ‘be strong’ in Urhobo — was a declaration of power from the start, of the uplifting, positive energy and the sharp artistic vision that makes up their sound. 

While unconventional, the intense method Kokoroko took to record new music was exactly what the collective needed after coming out of a pandemic, to get back to their usual groove. “We all hadn't spent a chunk of time together in a while and we needed to devote that place for seeing each other, just building, and connecting,” says percussionist Onome Edgeworth. “We took over the studio and it really ended up feeling like home — there was even someone there cooking for us. That changed the energy of the music completely. Rather than just running into the studio for a day when we've got other stuff going on in our lives, we were totally immersed in the production and the tracks.” 

Kokoroko’s debut album, Could We Be More, set to be released in August, is one of the most highly-anticipated records of the last few years. It’s incredible to think that this group — already so prominent within the UK music scene — are still yet to release their first full length record. Their streaming numbers on Spotify are figures usually reserved for successful artists on their second or even third album, with over 47 million streams of their breakout track ‘Abusey Junction’ and over 63 million streams of their first EP release at the time of writing. The former track not only brought them viral success when it was first released on Brownswood Records’ compilation album We Out Here, but also received critical acclaim, winning Track of The Year at the Worldwide Music Awards in 2019. Not bad for a young band yet to create their first full project.

So how does a band already so renowned go about refining their definitive sound for a debut record? The answer was in their change of writing and recording methods, says Edgeworth. “It's a more confident and more comfortable sound, and I think that's because it’s the first time we've actually spent invested time in a studio,” he explains. “We could spend a lot of time focusing on the songs we were trying to create, bringing new sounds and producing them with a different energy.”

Formed in 2014 by Maurice-Grey and Edgeworth, there has always been an equal sense of charmed fate and purposeful drive behind Kokoroko. The pair met through working together in Wood Green, London, and decided to create the group after having impassioned discussions about the disparity between those playing Afrobeat in the UK capital and the crowds listening to it. “We would talk about gigs we’d seen, where there had been one Nigerian player on stage and no Black people in the crowd,” says Edgeworth. “There are so many West Africans in London and yet you’d go to a space to hear Black music being played and there were none of us there.” Instead of continuing to bemoan the situation, Maurice-Grey suggested to Edgeworth that they could be the ones to change it, and Kokoroko was born. 

The pair enlisted members for their new group from the best of London’s young musicians, and the group quickly grew from two to eight members. Joining the group came saxophonist and composer Cassie Kinoshi, trombonist Richie Seivewright, guitarists Oscar Jerome and Toby Adenaike, keys player Yohan Kebede, and drummer Ayo Salawu. While all equally as interested in playing Afrobeat as Edgeworth and Maurice-Grey, these new players also brought new dimensions to the band’s sound. Kinoshi brought her own experience of jazz performance along with classical composition and visual art (she recently created a triptych installation for King’s Place), Jerome added the band’s now familiar guitar licks and Salawu, the recognisable and dance stirring beat. 

With so many influences from so many members, it must be hard for the band to come back together after working on their solo projects, but Edgeworth says that it’s also part of the magic that makes Kokoroko’s sound so intoxicating. “Sometimes it is worrying, but I think the best part of having so many people are the ways we raise everyone’s songs up,” he says. “We build them as a group. Someone will bring an idea and we play it and work it. Sometimes they stay pretty similar to what they started off as, and sometimes they change completely as the group gets involved. But you get the energy of wherever someone's been, what they’ve been doing or studying or playing with in their free time.” 

This spirit of collaboration can be heard in the new album; there are more diverse sounds and varied visions apparent in the tracks than ever before, but the group has never sounded so united. “You might not get it straight away, but I think when you listen to the whole album, it tells the story of eight people. There's different textures and different moments and it makes sense,” says Edgeworth. “When we were recording and it wasn't in order, we had quite a moment of worry, thinking, how do we fit these songs together? Then after some time away, having not listened to the record for a couple of months, I recently went back to it and listened to it through,” he pauses. “It’s concise, it tells a story, and it sounds like each of us are in there. It’s really special.” 

We may have to wait a little while longer for the full album, but Kokoroko hasn’t been shy in performing their new sound home and further afield. At the start of 2022, they completed a headline tour of the UK and they recently wowed crowds at Gala Festival in London. Soon, they’ll take their sound to Cambridgeshire’s We Out Here Festival, a jazz event brought to life by Gilles Peterson and Brownswood Recordings; the same people that will release Could We Be More this August. “We Out Here is such a great festival,” says Edgeworth. “Every time we play there it seems like the sun goes down during our set, which is pretty cool.” Some of the best gigs of recent times, however, have been in Europe, where Kokoroko have discovered a wider fan base than they could have imagined. “Paradiso in Amsterdam is the best, honestly it’s just amazing,” says Edgeworth with a grin. “We spent three days there last time. Also, Paris is really cool, and we always feel like we’re super lucky with crowds in Belgium.” 

It was at a hometown show, during a night in Electric Brixton however, that the group feel like they really found their place. “Electric is a really massive venue, but it still feels intimate, you can see and connect with people, and you can hear the crowd,” says Edgeworth. “For that gig we were all in another place. Adrenaline carried us through, and it was amazing. It’s nights like those when you can see the progress and feel how we’ve developed as a live act.” 

What of the band’s initial manifesto however, do the gigs they now play show the progress that they hope to achieve? Is there a difference in the crowds they play for, and does it feel as though they’ve had an impact on the UK’s Afrobeat scene? “Absolutely, it’s just super diverse. It's such a weird crowd and it's beautiful,” says Edgeworth. “You get completely different people in that crowd as well. Different generations. Sometimes we've got three generations in the crowd at our gigs, how beautiful.” 

The growing scene can be felt in the crowds Kokoroko now attracts. “When we started, we’d play world music shows and feel that the crowd wasn't quite right — that it could be way more diverse,” says Edgeworth. “A Nigerian band would come over and unless it was modern Afrobeats, there was very few Nigerians there. We’ve always been about, ‘how do we play this music and represent it in a way that brings that audience back in and makes it makes a bit more sense for?’ I think we're slowly achieving it, along with a few other bands that are doing the similar thing.”

Although their debut album hasn’t even hit people’s ears yet, the group are already thinking forward and creating new ways to bring their music and their message to people. “Videos and short films! We really want to go into that world. Music is very much storytelling and marrying that with other art forms, is quite up there on our list,” says Edgeworth. As always though, the group’s focus is partly away from their own experience and out into the wider musical landscape. “We want to connect the dots in Africa. I think there are quite a few artists we want to work with. Nigerian artists and like Ghanaian artists, as well as some of the guys that are working in South Africa at the moment,” says Edgeworth. “We’ll be getting that to happen. Creating a space for that is definitely on the cards.” 

Could We Be More arrives 5 August via Brownswood Recordings.

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More about: KOKOROKO