BLACK FONDU is rooted but limitless

Moving capriciously across South London stages, he is revered in terms that feel mythic. He appears as a lone figure, bathed in light, clinging to the microphone as though it is a lifeline. His sound is colossal — hyperpop collides with noise and fervent punk, building into a form of abstract grime in a nuclear fission to which he moves at the mercy of. Possessed by each line, it is an energy that reads as untouchable.

Despite his explosive live sets, BLACK FONDU has otherwise remained enigmatic. His debut single “ANOTHER DOMESTIC / SB 13” arrived last year, offering a concrete introduction to his work. He has since teased new music through cryptic, sporadic social media posts. Even as the underground whispers turn into more overt hype in response to such a novel voice — which has seen him go from local venues to festival stages — BLACK FONDU is in no hurry to explain his vision. But now, he’s opening up.

On an early autumn afternoon in Peckham, I am walking through Lucas Gardens with Reggie — the name behind the moniker. Although he has only just returned from a trip to Amsterdam the day before, he is animated as he shows me around a few of the spaces that hold core memories for him. Reggie refers to the green space as the “shrooms park”, explaining that in his first year of university, he met two Parisians who would later become his flatmates. While they became closely acquainted through nights out that he recollects fondly, he tells me that it wasn’t until they took mushrooms together at that park that they became truly connected. Nearby is a sprawling tree, which he refers to as the “weed tree”. “Imagine us all sat around the trunk,” he says. He describes instances of him and his friends sitting at the broad base of the tree, smoking and talking endlessly, only growing closer underneath the wide branches.

In opening up about these landmarks and the role that they have played in some of his most formative connections, it becomes clear why Reggie has maintained a sense of quiet mystery. He speaks generously, thoughtfully, and at times philosophically. In these spaces, he was free of any mental barriers urging him to hold himself back. Much like the roots of the tree embedded in the earth, he was able to reach into himself deeply, allowing his internal world to reach the external.

This sense of actualisation is reflected in the BLACK FONDU persona — something that has taken time to bring to form, and now faces limitless possibilities. His upcoming debut EP BLACKFONDUISM arrives as a culmination of that process.

“The sounds and the worlds that I’ve created are so different,” he explains. “I can take one song from one collection, and then make a whole project based on that. A new world will start to emerge, and I can make loads of songs within that. I’ve always moved like that.”

“My whole journey is that whatever I feel in the moment, I make it happen. And suddenly, when I’m not feeling it anymore, I move on to a new thing,” he continues. “It’s never the same. But like a tree, it’s all rooted in the same shit.”

To understand the artistry, philosophy, and evasiveness of BLACK FONDU, he takes me back to the beginning. His first few years of early childhood were spent in his homeland of Accra, Ghana. His dad played violin and expressed a deep love for classical music, filling their home with Tchaikovsky, ballet scores, and Rachmaninoff. “Growing up, my dad would always come from England to visit us for a very long time,” he explains. There wasn't a moment when we weren't listening to music. My dad loves music and art, and he exposed us to it all the time,” he recalls. The constant presence of sound in his home would turn out to have a lasting impact. “All of my siblings make music now. We all decided that’s where we want to go.”

When Reggie was five, his family briefly moved to Spain before making a home in England, but this transition was not without its own complications. He tells me that in Ghana, students were placed by intelligence rather than age. He learned among an older cohort, remaining intellectually challenged. In the UK, age determined his academic placement. This was a jarring shift, which ultimately affected Reggie’s relationship with school. “I was kind of stunted, and I started to hate it,” he admits. Consequently, he and his brother became restless. “We were so bored,” he sighs. Together, they would spend their time cycling up and down London, making the city their playground. It was an escape from a sense of constraint, but ultimately, music held the truest form of release — as Reggie would discover at only six years old.

"There's comedy in that," he says now, realising how his childhood antics now inform his approach to art. ”I know what I'm doing. I'm making you feel something. It's kind of the same with the music as well. A lot of this EP is very comedic and satirical, making fun of music, but at the same time, I'm showing you I could give you what you want; however, I don’t want to. Life shouldn't be that fucking easy."

With much of his musical background based within the realm of classical music, I wonder how Reggie came to carve out such a complex experimental path, and he is happy to enlighten me. In his secondary school music room, new doors opened. “Being exposed to classical music put me in certain circles at school,” he says. “I was always in the band rooms, I was always making music. In the music room, I was also with people on the computers, producing. I was very interested in them, so I went over and asked what they were doing. I listened, and it was trap music. I’d never heard that shit before!”

When he speaks about that experience, it’s almost as though he’s back in the room hearing trap music for the first time. “What the fuck is this?” He laughs. “The next day, I was on the computer producing. And it never stopped.”

Reggie made it his mission to educate himself. “I was working so hard to learn the language of the software, the DAW, Ableton. I was learning hardcore for hours every day,” he notes. His discipline came from his approach to playing piano — which he did eventually take up — as well as being involved in football. He puts it simply: “You keep fucking going.” With that mindset, it became a regular practice. “When my dad would ask if I practised piano, I’d tell him I’m too tired. He’d say, ‘Just ten minutes. Feel the piano, tell your body and your brain that you remember this thing.’ Once you have this habit, but it's also something you love, it can be the most insane explosion," he says. "Because it's never-ending."

This led Reggie to a plethora of influences, whether a household name or a fresh discovery from a Bandcamp wormhole. He lists multiple: The Beatles, MF DOOM, Skepta, Aphex Twin, Bjork, Dizzee Rascal's Boy In Da Corner. “I listened to that for the first time a year ago. The first track is beautiful. It’s aware music. It sounds like a cry for help, like he’s speaking to people. What makes it beautiful is how he’s helping people. It’s not something you can listen to to pass time, but you can learn from it, like a mantra.”

Further afield, he stumbled into Japanese noise, finding calm and relatability in the intense sound. “I was so calm listening to that, and I found the contrast so beautiful,” he tells me. He gushes over Takako Minikawa, citing her as some of “the most beautiful music”. As he speaks about her work, it’s he appears awestruck. “She will record and sample anything and everything. It’ll be abrasive, soft, magical,” he sighs. “She soundtracked my life for the past three years.”

“Every song that’s ever impacted me has related to me, whether it be a love, a memory, it’s related to a deepness right within me,” he reveals. “And that’s what I get influenced by — how these things make me feel. It’s less the sound, and more of the experience of it. I react. Sometimes I’ll leave a show with this wall of energy and want to make music. I’m trying to recreate the feeling in my own way.” With every artist that he fell for, he'd return to consume everything: deep cuts, mixtapes, with no stone left unturned. It’s reflective of a deep-seated love for the craft, and an insatiable desire to engage with the minds who create such inspiring work.

Yet, the core of BLACK FONDU is formed by an influence slightly closer to home — his mother. “She’d be singing around the house,” he recalls. “They weren’t pop songs or anything, just beautiful memories that she may have grown up with from church. Whenever I’d hear her voice, I’d have a moment of just feeling so happy. And my mom's character, what she believes in, is the most incredible influence on my life.”

During a difficult period in his later teen years, Reggie had a breakthrough. He and his brother hotboxed their shared bedroom — "the first time I'm smoking weed," he clarifies, appearing slightly amazed by his own audacity — and put on Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void. It shattered something open. Suddenly, he didn’t just want to absorb feelings through music — he wanted to create them. "I thought, imagine music can feel like that. Imagine using music to make people feel alive.” He spiralled into a sort of existential crisis that lasted six months. When the fog, he had a clear vision and, more importantly, a method. He would make music that thrives on feeling rather than being based on formula, that cannot be constricted, and breathes life in the same way that Noé's film did.

Arriving at name BLACK FONDU was a rather arbitrary choice. “It just looked good," Reggie shrugs simply when I ask what inspired the title. And that was the point. BLACK FONDU can be anything at any given time; it is not suggestive of a particular sound or aesthetic. "I wanted my name to be very difficult to attach meanings to, therefore, I can do anything. It's limitless."

"It's a version of me that I believe is the inner inner," he explains. "It's like the conversations you have with yourself when you're alone. I don't care what anyone will think. I'm not conscious of other people. It's me."

Reggie creates out of urgency, attuned to a natural form of freestyling. He'll hear a frequency, rhythm, or an idea, and chase it without a second thought. As we’re talking, a siren blares, and he almost instinctively makes a beat to it. There’s no overthinking behind it, but a natural intuition.

BLACK FONDU entered London's underground somewhat serendipitously. Reggie’s brother, who played in a band, often spoke of The Windmill. On a whim, Reggie showed up to a gig and asked the booker if he could perform. Although he got a polite e-mail brush-off, he chose to just keep hanging out there anyway. On one of those casual Windmill nights, the manager of a headlining band approached him, asking if he made music. “He was dressed like a sailor. Massive moustache, a total character,” he laughs. They stepped outside so Reggie could play him some tracks. Minutes later, he was offered a slot the following week.

His first performance as BLACK FONDU at The Windmill was to three people: "I liked that because it meant I had no pressure, and I could just figure it out as I went,” he tells me. So he did just that. Alone on stage, he poured everything into the open as though he were before a crowd of hundreds. Gradually, the sets got bigger and busier. By the end of that year, he'd played twenty to twenty-five shows, utilising each one as a test, pushing his sound harder and louder. "When I heard bands, I'd be like, why the fuck is this so loud? It's so good," he tells me. "Loudness is the impression you make. You need to feel everything." Inspired, he’d go home and tinker with his tracks until he figured out how to make them hit with more force."I was booming, breaking the speakers,” he smiles.

The Windmill scene taught him more than just how to be loud, but also how to embrace and exhibit musical freedom. He’d latch on to the punk energy of bands like Fat Dog, the way AV Dummy's frontman would swing the mic stand dangerously close to the crowd, drunk and fearless. "That energy attracts energy," Reggie says. "I want to emulate that. I don't give a fuck when I'm making music, when I'm dancing. I don't care what anyone will think. I know what I'm here to do, and I'm going to show them this experience."

Those who have been in the room with BLACK FONDU might describe his presentation as transfixing. He completely surrenders to the music, dancing with complete abandon — demonstrating to his audiences that there is no wrong way to move, or respond to the music. He recalls an instance of being in Poland this summer, when he spotted someone in the crowd. “They were lying completely flat on the floor, just stretched out and moving slowly. They were dancing and lost in their own space,” he tells me. ”I couldn't stop smiling. They are free. They get it. They get life."

At a corporate event at the South Bank Centre, he was discovered by his manager, Paul. “It was ridiculous that I was even playing there,” he laughs, the vision of him performing so freely in a rigid setting seeming too good to be true. Paul approached afterwards and asked simply: "What do you want?" Reggie answered that he wanted to make music, and so, the gears were in motion.

Although Reggie was eager to capture the feelings that he’d cultivated on stage within a formal body of work, the making of BLACKFONDUISM was nearly derailed by disaster. Last Christmas, while making the track that would become 'holla back girl', his laptop started smoking and died completely. He thought he'd lost everything, two years of work and plans he’d laid out for the future. "That shit broke me," he admits quietly. "I didn't even cry. I was just so empty."

It was a catastrophe that compelled him to question whether he should be making music at all, he tells me. “I just thought, am I meant to be doing something else? What does this mean? What is this pushing me towards? I still had this feeling in me that I wanted to make music. So it's a test. It’s showing me that I could lose everything, but how much does it mean to me?"

The project spans his influences without being bound to any of them. “holla back girl” — inspired by hearing Gwen Stefani's original for the first time just a week before creating it — takes the iconic kick drum and cranks it to oblivion, highlighting it as the moment that struck Reggie upon his first listen. "It fucked me up," he says of discovering the hit track. ”The drums on that, fuck my life. What is that kick? My instinct was just to turn it all the way up and see what happens. It opens my textures and my sound alongside something familiar. The best way to do it was to keep it fun and organic, but still my style, my sound." While the beloved pop hook is still there, it’s encased within BLACK FONDU’s glitchy, deconstructed grit. Like he mentions to me earlier, he is reproducing a feeling rather than a sound.

“im not sleeping”, the EP's lead single, grew from his struggles with insomnia and self-love. "I struggled to sleep because of the discomfort, the fears, and all the anxiety," he explains. "Then I wrote that song, just about me not sleeping. And I found that so funny and beautiful. From making that song, I suddenly had this weird comfort. Now I actually can sleep well.” He chose it as the first single rather than “holla back girl” for a specific reason: "I was worried at the time. I didn't want people to associate me with that off the bat, because the EP is about me. It's about the project."

Intensifying the EP’s thematic dynamics is “C00N V2”, perhaps the most confrontational track within the work, which addresses the fetishisation of African culture that Reggie witnessed while travelling through Europe. "It's everywhere," he says, frustration breaking through his tone. "The noise is so real. It gets so noisy within me when I experience those things, and I wanted that noise to reflect it, while still being fun.” It’s a striking balance between fury, play, and that aforementioned mischief that he’s carried up to this point. "Life comes in these phases where everything matters, and then nothing matters," he reflects. "It's beautiful. It's good to laugh as much as you cry."

Reggie possesses an imitable faith in his recognition of what truly matters, and what different phases of his life mean to within the present context. He’s in his final year of art school, maintaining a consistent current of creativity and inspiration. He identifies film as a longtime love, and although he doesn’t engage with it in the same ways that he used to, he reallocates his love for cinema into the self-shot videos that accompany his releases. Just across the road, he points out the site where he filmed his very first music video. The brick walls are covered with vibrant graffiti, and it’s fenced off with a broken down wooden door as the only point of entrance. “They used to compost here,” he tells me, as the land is now largely barren. Everything feeds back into everything else, and he is reminded of the resilience that has brought his vision to fruition. "When I approach challenges now, I have all these other things I've overcome that help me," he says. "The perspective grows. The unknown isn't as unknown as it seems."

BLACK FONDU is the zenith of Reggie’s knowing. He's already made another EP, created during the exhaustion and absorption of summer festivals. "I absorbed so much during summer," he says, energy rising at the thought. "I was like, I want to have fun. I need to get this out of me now." It's an entirely different body of work, he insists, though he won't elaborate further. What can be guaranteed is that it’s yet another branch on the tree that continues to grow. Even the sky can’t impose a limit.

As we finish walking through his Peckham landmarks, the afternoon grey flirting with the idea of lifting, Reggie seems both relieved and energised to have finally articulated all of this, and having taken the time to understand what he was building before explaining it to anyone else. "Detachment is the most important thing in life," he says as we prepare to part ways. "You can feel everything better that way. Then it's not about you. It's about the feeling, the experience."

For someone who's spent months as a presence procured through visceral performances and word of mouth, BLACK FONDU is stepping into full view. The work is only beginning, and through it, he’s finally prepared to be exposed. London’s underground phantom is ready to speak. What BLACK FONDU asks is: are we ready to listen?