{"product_id":"azul","title":"Azul","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn explorer from Earth is pulled through a malformed black hole and crash-lands on a distant\u003cbr\u003ewater-covered planet. Her ship lies in ruins, its systems failing, lights flickering through smoke. Then it\u003cbr\u003ebegins to rain.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs water enters the machinery, the opposite of what might be expected occurs. The ship starts to recover.\u003cbr\u003eIts interface reorganises itself into legible glyphs; damaged systems begin to hum back to life; the\u003cbr\u003esurrounding terrain slowly assimilates with its structure. Everything is washed in pastel blues, greens and\u003cbr\u003epurples, and a landscape that should feel entirely alien produces an inexplicable sensation of home.\u003cbr\u003eThis is the world NikNak imagines for Azul, an album built around water and our increasing desire to\u003cbr\u003ebecome more integrated with technology. Yet the relationship she proposes is not one of technological\u003cbr\u003edomination over nature. Here, nature repairs the machine. Water nourishes the human body and its\u003cbr\u003eextensions alike, dissolving the perceived boundary between biological and technological systems. The\u003cbr\u003ecyborg at the centre of Azul is fluid rather than metallic: copper capillaries, nanotechnology and water\u003cbr\u003ecirculating through the same body.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart of this imagined world has a very real source. Much of Azul was developed during a residency at Casa Ilhabela in Brazil, where NikNak collected underwater recordings specifically for the project. These\u003cbr\u003erecordings give the album's fiction a physical foundation: its imagined waters begin with real ones. Field\u003cbr\u003erecordings become material for an environment that is simultaneously otherworldly and rooted in direct\u003cbr\u003eexperience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is a natural evolution for an artist whose practice has long resisted a single mode of listening. An\u003cbr\u003eaward-winning turntablist, composer and improviser, NikNak has built a language around manipulating\u003cbr\u003esound in real time and treating recorded material as something fluid rather than fixed. On Azul, that instinct expands into more immersive world-building: sound becomes environment, organism and narrative at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing 2024's Ireti, Azul marks NikNak's arrival on Lapsus Records. Beneath its science-fiction\u003cbr\u003earchitecture lies a quieter and more personal transformation. Back on Earth, the explorer was afraid of\u003cbr\u003ewater. Here, she eventually kneels beside a small rock pool and drinks the rainwater collecting within it. For the first time in a long while, she feels completely at ease. What once inspired fear has become\u003cbr\u003enourishment; what should feel foreign feels like home.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe feeling doesn't last. The ship's distress beacon was activated when it lost course, and somewhere\u003cbr\u003ebeyond the atmosphere its signal has been received. The explorer looks towards the point where she first\u003cbr\u003etore through the sky and sees another vessel beginning to emerge. For now, she calls this place Azul.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lapsus Records","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57653557526901,"sku":"LPS47","price":24.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0267\/6952\/2736\/files\/unnamed_9388be80-9c25-4fd0-86d8-b304df0edbed.jpg?v=1791990306","url":"https:\/\/rubadub.co.uk\/products\/azul","provider":"Rubadub","version":"1.0","type":"link"}