the silhouettes project
Francisco Espregueira
“The Silhouettes Project provides an open space - a recording studio and live venue located within the Total Refreshment Centre in Hackney, London - where MCs, singers, musicians and producers can connect and create.”
Curated by Melting Pot Music label, The Silhouettes Project is an exciting community project that serves as a platform for up and coming hip hop, soul and jazz artists from the UK. Founded by Asher Korner (a.k.a. Kosher) and Jaden Osei-Bonsu (a.k.a. Eerf Evil) in 2019, The Silhouettes Project started releasing a brand new single every thursday since September. The full LP, compiling all those releases from all the different artists, drops tomorrow. Names like Kofi Stone, Summers Sons, Enny, KeepVibesNear, Manik MC, Lex Amor, Louis The Hippie, Summer-Pearl, Joe Beard and many more contribute with 15 tracks making this record a perfect portrait of the new generation of hip hop artists hailing from the UK.
The Silhouettes Project LP took more than a year to be completed, unifying on a single tape incredibly talented artists of the same calibre. All of them exploding with their own vibrations at the Root 73 studio, a community space in Hackney, London. There’s names that we knew and previously presented here. Others were unknown to us. All of them, here, also represent what O Sótão stands for - underground talent, not commercial, not caving in their artistry, high-karat independent music. The most exciting snapshot of UK’s underground hip hop scene in years, The Silhouettes Project is available in the highest digital standards with a collectors edition gatefold vinyl dropping towards the end of the year. The art direction is executed by Sergio “SagaUno” Alférez, an acclaimed designer and illustrator from Medellín, Colombia. Courtesy of Melting Pot Music.
Check out The Silhouettes Project: bio.to/silhouettesproject
There is a desperate need for spaces in which people can come together and develop their creative potential, especially with the consistent withdrawal of funding from the arts sector in the UK and with the constant threat of gentrification which has seen the closure of countless community and grassroots creative organisations. As we grew as a brand and organisation, we began to fully understand the importance of what we were doing. From the studio sessions to the events, we saw the impact on people’s outlooks on their own careers, we saw them grow in confidence in performing and collaborating and even taking their own initiative to utilise the network provided for them. We heard their feedback, we felt the excitement in the atmospheres at our events and studio sessions, and we saw the community grow every time we brought it together.
- Kosher & Eerf Evil