Alfa Mist

Prioritising feeling over perfectionism. This is the credo that drives the restless creativity of multi-instrumentalist, rapper and producer Alfa Mist.
Since the release of his first full-length project Nocturne in 2015, Alfa has established himself as one of the UK’s most focused, in-demand and distinct musical voices. He has worked with the likes of Jordan Rakei and Tom Misch. Artists look to him for his unique blend of intimate bedroom production and expansive jazz group orchestration, since Alfa is yet to be boxed into a specific genre. His music spans everything from hip-hop beat-making to producing for artists such as rapper Loyle Carner, composing neo-classical works for the London Contemporary Orchestra, and reworking tracks from composer Ólafur Arnalds and pioneering jazz label Blue Note.

Growing up in east London, Alfa’s journey to jazz was an unexpected one. “There’s no access to jazz where I come from,” he says. “Society made us think that there were only three options for success for Black kids who had the same amount of money as me: be a musician, sportsperson or criminal.” Naturally drawn to music thanks to the vitality of the grime scene that was breaking across the capital, Alfa would play with music production software during his break times at school, learning to put together fast-paced grime instrumentals. As he dug deeper into UK rap and hip-hop, he became curious about the samples used on records by the likes of Blackstar, Madlib and J Dilla. “Those producers were the gateway to jazz,” he comments. They ultimately led him to teach himself piano by ear to break down the harmonic intricacies of their formative tracks.

By 2017, Alfa had written, arranged and produced the eight tracks that make up his debut album, Antiphon. Featuring bassist and singer Kaya Thomas-Dyke and guitarist Jamie Leeming, who are still members of his band today, Alfa blended snippets of conversation with his two older brothers on the importance of family amidst intricate, driving instrumentals and luscious acoustic arrangements. It was a breakthrough success, amassing over 10 million views on YouTube and millions more on Spotify, marking Alfa out as a fresh talent with a remarkably mature and self-assured poise in the studio.

Following albums, 2019’s Structuralism and 2021’s debut for ANTI-, Bring Backs, continued Alfa’s musical introspection. Structuralism produced nine searching yet deeply soulful tracks, questioning how we formulate our identities through Alfa’s experience of being raised by his Ugandan mother. Bring Backs, meanwhile, featured groove-based explorations and meandering fragments tied together by a remarkable poem written by Hilary Thomas expressing the sensuous realities of creating community in a new country. Always drawing on his own experiences, Bring Backs is Alfa at his most unguarded, expressing the constant concern of being unable to escape the uncertainty of poverty, even when success is at your door.