The glass-walled, high-rise walkway of Your Rainbow Panorama, Olafur Eliasson’s installation in Aarhus, Denmark, is an otherworldly experience: panels of glass slowly change colour to reveal a new hue to the vista and a new perspective. It is this idea of multiple perspectives from a single vantage point that has inspired R&B experimentalist Tony Njoku’s similarly colourful record, Your Psyche’s Rainbow Panorama.
The British-Nigerian artist’s music has always been difficult to categorise. Raised in Lagos before moving to the UK at 14, his previous releases In Greyscale and HPAC have played like the prismatic rainbow he wants to capture, shifting freely from the ethereal to unbridled percussive urges. “I just want to reach a point of total artistic freedom, no self-inflicted barriers,” he has said.
Your Psyche’s Rainbow Panorama is a record of contrasts – from the sparkling synths of Naive and Apprehensive to the jittering freneticism of Confident and anxious balladry of Insecure – but it all hangs together by virtue of Njoku’s consistent experimentation. “The purpose of the piece is to heighten your sense of disorientation,” Njoku has said, “it’s meant to be experiential rather than narrative.”
• Your Psyche’s Rainbow Panorama is out now on Silent Kids Records. Tony Njoku plays in Bristol on 19 October and London, 24 October
