With "Nefasphere", pioneering American composer and Mutantrumpet creator Ben Neill and Ethiopian electronic innovator Mikael Seifu harness that elemental power to create a piece that feels at once grounded in tradition and suspended in the future.
Released in two versions, the meditative Worldwinds Mix and the textural Moire Mix, Nefasphere is more of a sound world than a song. The collaboration itself is an international bridge, spanning from Seifu’s home base in Addis Ababa to Neill’s studio in New York. It’s also a bridge across time as Seifu was once Neill’s student at Ramapo College, where his early explorations of electronic music first caught the composer’s attention. Fifteen years later, they return not to the classroom but to a shared creative space, bringing with them years of experience and a mutual respect that flows clearly through the music.
The Worldwinds Mix lives up to its name, evoking vast landscapes carried by cyclical rhythms and breathy tones. Seifu’s Ethiopiyawi Electronic style which is already known for blending Ethiopian scales and modal traditions into global electronic frameworks, gives this track its pulse while Neill’s Mutantrumpet layers harmonic textures that feel alive, almost inhaling and exhaling in time.
The Moire Mix shifts the perspective, adding fractured percussion and glitchy interference patterns that ripple across the soundscape like shifting light. It’s denser, more layered and yet still grounded in the elemental core of breath and rhythm. Where the first mix invites stillness, the second invites motion — together, they feel like almost two sides of the same journey.
What makes Nefasphere so compelling for a world music audience is the authenticity. This isn’t fusion in the superficial sense, but it is a dialogue. With Seifu’s deep engagement meeting with Ethiopian tradition, and Neill’s decades of work at the intersection of technology and improvisation. This is a collaboration rooted in mentorship, respect and curiosity al qualities that infuse the music with warmth and purpose.
For Seifu, whose last release was the acclaimed Zelalem EP in 2016, Nefasphere signals a powerful return. For Neill, it extends a career long exploration of memory, pattern, and transformation. And for listeners, it offers something rare - music that doesn’t just represent two cultures but which embodies the spirit of conversation between them.
Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/album/0YrFAFnD7f8jsrH5LGf5XO
