Limited Edition 10” Vinyl LP

Record/Vinyl + Digital AlbumHoused in a reverse board, offset-printed sleeve. Includes specially commissioned liner notes by Tavia Nyong'o, exclusive to the physical edition. Pressed on black vinyl.

Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

SIDE – A

SIDE – B

Un-Muting
This record is not an album but a diagram, a blackground score for a people who have never stopped dancing. Instruments exiled into the vitrines of empire, their voices stilled by taxonomic theft, now murmur and hum again. This is restitution by vibration, and the sounds you hear refuse to be forgotten, to be fixed, to refuse to die. You won’t find Western time signatures here; you’ll find time folding, spilling, catching fire. His compositions bespeak an afro-sonic-philo-sophy, more drastic than gnostic. These desperate times call for desperate pleasures."

-Tavia Nyong'o
Un-Muting documents Berlin-based, Ladbroke Grove-born artist Satch Hoyt’s ongoing project of Un-muting historical African instruments held in Western museum collections. This album features Un-Muting Beyond Misspelt Borders, a composition originally commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary, in which Hoyt continues to challenge the colonial legacies of these objects through his concept of ‘sonic restitution’.

The project began with a recording session in October 2023 at the British Museum in London, where Hoyt was granted access to a selection of African instruments from the Department...  more

Released October 3, 2025
Ancient African instruments: Trumpets (Kuba), Sanzas (Chokwe, Lega, Kongo, Yao), Ilimba (Nyamwezi), Whistles (Chokwe, Luba, Pende, Bambara), Talking Drum (Yoruba), Slit Drum (Kuba, Yaka, Tetela, Songye), Bell (Tetela), Rattles (Yoruba, Luba, Bamileke, Pende) and Flutes (Kuba, Kongo, Mossi, Bambara)

Western instruments: Flute, Electric Flute, Roland Handsonic, Synthesizers, Glockenspiel, Wooden Xylophone and assorted hand percussion

Composed, arranged, produced and performed by Satch Hoyt
Engineered and co-produced by Dirk Leyers
Recordings of musical instruments held by the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum by Adam Laschinger
Studio recordings of African instruments from Satch Hoyt's collection by Dirk Leyers
Uncredited Female Chant on wax cylinder recording by Karl Edvard Laman (c. 1910), held by the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv
Additional sound design and production by Call & Response Studios
Mixed by Hendrick Valera (Cali, Colombia)
Mastering and lacquer cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering

Cover art: Satch Hoyt, Score #1, 2020
Design by Elisabeth Klement
Direction by Andrea Zarza Canova
Distribution by Honest Jon’s
traza © 2025

Un-Muting Beyond Misspelt Borders was commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary for the exhibition Your Ears Later Will Know to Listen (www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/whats-on/your-ears-later-will-know-to-listen/).