Get to know Nkisi, the artist uniting hyper-modern club sounds and Afrocentric rhythms

As a child, Melika Ngombe Kolongo considered herself a nerd. Raised in Belgium, the now London-based Congolese artist and DJ found sanctity in solo listening.

“I’ve always just listened to music by myself,” she says. “I was into hip hop and I was also into more electronic stuff, but what linked everything together is that I’ve always been more into the darker side of everything.”

With formative interests in harder sounds such as gabba, trance and dark Belgian techno (“I feel like back then those sounds were kind of looked down on!” she says) it wasn’t until she moved to London that she fully embraced the eclecticism of her personal taste. “In London I could become confident about all the different stuff I’m into”, she explains. “I could just make music and mesh everything together and it was like, ‘It works, this is possible’. I don’t have a background in making music, so I’ve had to really trust my intuition. A lot of my music is about repetition and thinking about what music actually does to your body.”

Now 32, Nkisi’s broad taste is evident in offerings like her 2017 ‘Kill’ EP, her NTS Radio show or through her work with NON Worldwide. Founded by Nkisi alongside Angel-Ho and Chino Amobi in 2015, it operates as a record label, art project, and socio-political network championing an African diaspora-focused collective of artists and creators. “It’s been very comforting to have the NON institution because I always have a house for ideas and free thinking,” Nkisi says.

Merging traditional sounds with wildly futuristic, high-octane club workouts and intricate Afrocentric percussion, Nkisi’s fusion of distinct styles and themes is explored in depth on her debut album ‘7 Directions’, which lands in January via cult experimentalist Lee Gamble’s UIQ imprint. “Lee heard my music and reached out to me, and I was actually already shaping this project,” she says. “It was just the right moment, and it was really nice to have him and the team be really into the idea and the concept.”

The seven-track album is dedicated to the late academic and author of African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo, Dr Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau. “He’s one of the few scholars who wrote about other systems of thought outside more Eurocentric ways of viewing the world,” she explains.

But ‘7 Directions’ feels like fresh territory even for Nkisi, as she engages with her fascination with philosophy. “The most important direction for self-healing is the walk inwards,” she says; the spiritual concept of a ‘seven direction walk’ inspired the album’s title. “I feel like this album really forced me to do that, and I feel like a changed person.”

‘7 Directions’ is out January 19 via UIQ

Jasmine Kent-Smith is Mixmag's Weekend Editor. Follow her on Twitter