Ibukun Sunday's 'Olùsìn [Worshippers]' Turns Devotion Into a Sound You Can Sit Inside
![Olùsìn [Worshippers] by Ibukun Sunday — cover art](/covers/ibukun-sunday-olusin-worshippers.jpg)
The Sonic Breakdown
Ibukun Sunday works out of a home studio in Harrow, Essex, and Olùsìn [Worshippers] — his Phantom Limb debut — is unmistakably a record about faith without being a record about doctrine. Eight tracks (Whisper, Echoes, Amen, Breeze, Ages, Devotion, Hill, Edge), each one a self-contained small room. The Quietus’s Daryl Worthington opened his Album of the Week review by writing that the opener “arrives fully formed in a swirl of watery keys and mist,” which is a fair description of the whole record.
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: There isn’t much of one, and that’s the point — these pieces breathe in the mid and upper registers, letting bass move in and out like weather rather than architecture.
The Spatial Dynamics: Compared to 2024’s Harmony / Balance, Worthington notes, these tracks are “lighter and more direct” — “snapshots, documents in sound capturing the sensations felt in fleeting moments of transcendence.” Where the earlier record built cathedrals, this one keeps finding the light in the doorway.
Standout Performance
Sunday plays viola as well as producing, and the string presence keeps the record human — there’s a hand on the bow in music that could easily have felt cloud-programmed.
Why It’s Certified
- 🌈 The whole thing plays as a single arc; the eight titles read as a set of small acts of noticing.
- ⚡ “Amen” — placed early, as a benediction rather than a benedictory closer.
- 🌈 The Quietus writes that “faith has its own music”; this record is a working definition of what that phrase can mean.