“I’ve been focused on who I am in my music, but now I’m exploring where I am,” Alfa Mist says. “I’m asking: how did I get here?” This is the journeying question that underpins Alfa’s fifth album, Variables. Traversing luscious, big band swing, head-nodding boom-bap rhythms and yearning melodies, the record is expansive, soulful and moving, in both body and spirit. On Variables, his second release for ANTI-, Alfa achieves his most fully realised, expressive musical work to date, coupling his keen ear for looping, memorably emotive piano lines with intuitive grooves and a free-flowing jazz improvisation. Since the release of his first full-length project Nocturne in 2015, Alfa has established himself as one of the UK’s most focused and distinct musical voices. He has worked with the likes of Jordan Rakei and Tom Misch, drummer Richard Spaven, producer Lester Duval and singer Emmavie. Alfa is yet to be boxed into a specific genre as his music spans everything from hip-hop beat-making to producing for artists such as rapper Loyle Carner, composing neo-classical works for the London Contemporary Orchestra, and reworking tracks from composer Ólafur Arnalds and pioneering jazz label Blue Note. Building on the success of 2017’s debut album, Antiphon, which has amassed over 10 million views on YouTube, 2019’s Structuralism and 2021’s debut for ANTI-, Bring Backs, Variables now finds Alfa moving forwards with renewed intensity and purpose.