Sound and Music and the British Council present: Transmutation [#160]

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An hour of newly commissioned music, brought to you by Sound and Music.

This week is a special New Music Commissioning Programme edition of The Sampler Mixtape.

Transmutation is the landmark project from the inaugural cohort of the New Music Commissioning Programme, delivered by Sound and Music in partnership the British Council. This radically inventive international collaboration unites six visionary composers across three continents, weaving new works that explore how sound carries memory, identity and radical transformation.

As heard on Resonance FM on Friday 30 January 2026 at 12pm and repeated on Wednesday 4 February 2026 at 3am, hosted by Vanessa Maria & Grace Bailey.

Want to curate your own mixtape? Get in touch with our team here.

Transmutation I: Ao by RIEKO & María Gabriela Rubio Hernández

María Gabriela Rubio Hernández & RIEKO

RIEKO, the Japanese-born neo-ritualist composer based between Margate and London, pairs with María Gabriela Rubio Hernández, the Colombian-Icelandic interdisciplinary artist working across electroacoustic music and sound art. Their collaboration “Ao” takes its name from a Japanese word that historically encompassed both blue and green, reflecting a time before those colours were culturally separated.

The work weaves together two deeply personal folk songs that shaped the artists’ childhoods—Colombian song “Canción de las Esmeraldas” and Japanese song “Akai Kutsu”—as entry points into profound questions of displacement, memory, national identity and belonging. Both artists were in personal transition during the commission, with María leaving Colombia for Iceland and RIEKO relocating from London to Margate.

“Working with my partner made me rethink what listening means. It’s not just hearing sound — it’s hearing someone else’s world.”

– María Gabriela Rubio Hernández

Recorded material ranges from Colombian rainforest and birdsong to lo-fi phone recordings of rural Japanese temples and the crashing ocean waves outside RIEKO’s Margate flat, all layered with voice and experimental electronics to create a cinematic sonic meditation on leaving, return, and the shifting colours of home.

“It’s almost like the outcome isn’t just the work — it’s the friendship we built through it.”

– RIEKO

Transmutation II: Interim Waktu by Fahmi Mursyid & Yasmin Rai

Fahmi Mursyid & Yasmin Rai

Bandung-based experimental electronic artist Fahmi Mursyid joins forces with London-based composer and AV installation artist Yasmin Rai for “Interim Waktu”, an ambitious eleven-movement work that spans microtonal instrumental writing, modular synthesis, field recordings and glitch textures. Their process established a weekly rhythm of independent creation followed by collaborative review, generating an extended body of work they envision extending beyond radio into physical releases and installations.

“This collaboration reminded me what freedom in music can feel like again.”

– Yasmin Rai

The pair obsessively explores thresholds between organic and digital sound—fingers on wood and strings, sympathetic resonance, bodily noise—alongside metallic, overtly electronic timbres that emerge even before digital processing. Drawing from biomimicry, randomness and chaos theory, they translate natural systems like plant growth patterns, ecological interactions and astronomical dynamics into evolving, generative musical structures.

“I never thought I could connect this deeply with someone across the world through sound — it felt like speaking a new shared language.”

– Fahmi Mursyid

Transmutation III: Waters of Memory by Tony Onuchukwu & Yantó

Tony Onuchukwu & Yantó

British-Nigerian composer and sound designer Tony Onuchukwu collaborates with São Paulo-based singer-composer Yantó on “Waters of Memory”, a profound work tracing the ocean as both healer and witness to ancestral journeys, colonial histories, environmental crisis and diasporic futures. The piece confronts the sea as a “container of ancestral history,” carrying memories of transatlantic crossings alongside contemporary routes of exchange and migration.

“What I loved most was how different our backgrounds are — yet we found a shared rhythm that felt effortless.”

– Yantó

Their process emphasised trust-building through regular check-ins that extended beyond the project itself, creating space for vulnerability and genuine inquiry rather than fixed outcomes. Musically, they merge Nigerian, Brazilian and UK sound worlds through voice, electronic production and acoustic textures, forging a fluid, atmospheric language that foregrounds storytelling and emotional resonance rooted in healing traditions from multiple cultures.