Sicaria Sound: the peaks and troughs of working as a DJ duo and what's in store for 2022

Interview by Dalia Al-Dujaili

Sicaria Sound is a DJ duo made up of Imbratura and Ndeko. Moroccan Imbratura, London born and raised, and Ndeko, South-Sudanese and English who was born in Sheffield, grew up in Ghana and Nigeria before moving back to the UK, met at the back of a lecture hall at university. The two girls were both studying Geography but their bond wasn’t formed over a love of maps, but over Fabric nightclub, as well as their joint love for bass heavy music, and in particular, dubstep.

Whilst living together, the two started to learn how to mix and after university, they both worked in radio production. The first resident DJs for the Deep Medi Musik label, Sicaria Sound have played Glastonbury, Boomtown, Outlook and Atlas Electronic. Forces to be reckoned with, they have held a monthly residency on Rinse FM since 2018 where they focus on playing new material from underground artists.

We catch up with Sicaria Sound to learn about what it’s like to work as a creative duo, what gets their creative juices flowing, and their label Cutcross, which is running through to 2022 and will see some new releases from the duo.

How did you guys start out making music?

We started making music together after we’d been DJ-ing for several years side by side. Pre-pandemic we’d been dabbling in production but having been stuck into back to back gigs for so long, it was the first lockdown that gifted us the free time to finally be able to put more effort into our productions. Up until our first release we sometimes dropped WIPs (works in progress) and little teasers in a few mixes but we’d not shaped up anything fully yet. A big factor in starting producing was wanting to find new ways to represent some of our own sonic, personal and heritage influences in our sets and mixes. Because although you can to a large extent carve a “sound” and “identity” in your mixes by using tunes other people have made, ultimately we loved the challenge of being able to craft tracks ourselves to be able to do this.

Being a creative duo I'm sure comes with difficulties. What's your relationship like whilst working together?

The great thing is we managed to bring aspects of our pre-music friendships over to our work life. We’ve definitely bickered over stuff, don’t get us wrong, but luckily we’re mostly on the same page with a lot of our perspectives and decisions. But kind of off the back of having a harmonious relationship, one of the biggest things we came to realise over the years is how much more friendship means to us than work. Last year it got to the point during our work calls when we realised it was taking us longer than usual to start discussing Sicaria tasks. Every time we got on the phone for a work call we just defaulted to chatting about non-music related stuff (and we can both talk for days, trust us), but as things intensified for us Sicaria wise we were constantly facing a mountain of work-related things we were supposed to be discussing. Imagine you’re talking to your best friend about something deeper and having to interject with menial stuff like “oh hold the thought, aren’t we supposed to be doing a socials post today?” as you know you’ll both end up forgetting about it later on. It’s things like this that no longer, if ever, align with us and who we want to be both as individuals and as Sicaria.

What do you enjoy most about working as a duo?

There’s quite a lot to be fair! Motivation, being able to job share and delegate tasks and when needed have one person step in more when the other needs downtime. Also, having someone to creatively bounce off but also to let you know when maybe what you thought was a great idea doesn’t actually bang, haha. Another big factor is having a travel buddy; a lot of peers in the industry tell us they get lonely, bored or sometimes even anxious doing it by themselves.

What's the most important thing your creative career has taught you each so far?

That it is essential to be self-sufficient. You can have an amazing team around you (bigging up our agent Kayleigh as well as Steph & Mala and some other wonderful people we have worked closely with) but you have to put in the work in order for them to be able to support you. Equally important is to think outside the box and accept that taking risks can often result in rewards. Overcoming your fears and putting yourself out there is the only reason we are where we are today. To quote a book we’ve both read, sometimes you have to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’.

Who inspired you to stay motivated during the pandemic?

Imbratura: I’m going to go with one that’s probably a bit cheesy but that has been my reality for over a year as I’ve been locked down with them: my family. I moved back home not too long before the pandemic after having lived out for seven years and forcing ourselves into isolation together was (fortunately) something that brought us a lot closer together. Observing how each member did their best to stay motivated, positive and hopeful inspired me to do the same during that period; especially at a time where there was a lot of uncertainty. So I really have to big them up a lot!

Ndeko: My partner (who I live with) has been a massive source of support and inspiration and I’m eternally grateful for it. He makes music as well and is very level headed in how he approaches navigating the music industry, which was hugely helpful for when in the past (and of course there’s still moments now) I would over think it too much. We’ve been together since before Sicaria Sound properly became a thing so he’s a very grounding person in my life to detach from industry ongoing with, yet also fully understands what we do.

What's one thing you always want to keep in mind when making music?

To have fun with it - it’s a constant roller coaster of a learning process and nothing is going to sound perfect. For example during our first release we were concerned about the quality of our mixdowns but we thought you know what, let’s just share what we’ve done with the world and keep working towards levelling up instead of shying away and overthinking it. Because knowing when to let go and release tracks instead of worrying over minute details that no one else will really notice is essential. You’ve also got to allow flexibility and freedom with the creative process. And always know that even though we might go in wanting to create a certain thing, it might turn out 10x better if we’re not so rigid with it.

Finally - what's next for you two? What can we expect to see in the future?

We’ll be continuing Sicaria Sound and we can’t wait for what’s next! Our label Cutcross is running through to 2022 with some releases we’re excited to be rolling out, and we’re aiming to drop some more of our own music before the year ends. In the meantime we’ve had a stacked run of live shows to keep us busy. This includes one final showdown of a party that we’ve been plotting: more on that soon! After all of that, Ndeko is continuing on in music as a solo act Mia Koden. Both of us have a shared ethos of “taking everything as it comes” with whatever we do next.

Listen to Sicaria Sound below.