Ballad Air & Fire

Fofana began a new trilogy of releases in 2022 with Ballad Air & Fire, providing a new and absolutely involving approach to his blend of sociopolitical activism (building a bit on Blues, the album is named after an Amiri Baraka poem) and tactile electronic exploration. The title track, at just over half an hour, is a carefully evolving blend of rhythms without beats, as everything from buried melodic snippets to crackling static becomes a deep meditation. “Unfinished Elegy” provides a shorter, calmer coda in the same conceptual vein, a haunted, entwined elegance.