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Michael Kiwanuka strips back his sound on 'Small Changes'

Marco Grey
/
courtesy of the artist

Today on World Cafe, Michael Kiwanuka's here to talk about his brand-new album, Small Changes. The English singer, songwriter and producer says his fourth record represents a period of big life changes, including leaving London and fatherhood.

"I was subliminally thinking of the fear of that change," he says. "Can things stay as they were? Can I adapt? And it sort of became the subject of the album."

The Mercury Prize winner talks about how past successes gave him the confidence to experiment with his sound. Small Changes strips back some of the production elements from 2019's Kiwanuka, bringing his voice back to the forefront. That production comes courtesy of co-producers Danger Mouse and Inflo.

Plus, Kiwanuka shares what song he originally thought was too cheesy, but now is one his favorites on the record.

Set List

  • "Small Changes"
  • "Floating Parade"
  • "The Rest of Me"
  • "One and Only"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).