Dabieh Steps Further Into His Own Story on ‘blunted axe. (on friendship)’
On “blunted axe. (on friendship)”, dabieh turns the end of a friendship into a reflection on memory, hurt and connection, while his years building Cloud X give the single another layer.
Friendship break-ups rarely get the same dramatic treatment as romantic ones. There is no set script for the last argument, the silence afterwards or the strange process of deciding what to do with years of good memories once somebody is no longer in your life. Dabieh’s “blunted axe. (on friendship)” sits right in that uncomfortable space.
Released today, the new single finds the Ghanaian-British artist, writer and cultural producer looking at the end of a friendship and everything that refuses to disappear with it. Love can still exist alongside anger. Good memories can survive somebody hurting you. Given enough distance, even your own version of what happened can start shifting.
It is messy territory, which is exactly why it works. Friendship can shape your life as deeply as romance, yet its endings often happen with far less ceremony. Sometimes there is a huge fallout. Sometimes somebody quietly becomes a person you used to know. Dabieh seems less interested in finding a clean conclusion than sitting with all the contradictions that remain.
Co-produced with Ted Turner, “blunted axe. (on friendship)” also introduces a wider project set to examine class, friendship, faith, fatherhood, human nature and the search for meaning. It is a big set of subjects, but Dabieh has spent much of his creative life thinking about people, identity and the spaces where the two meet.
For plenty of listeners, his name will already be closely tied to Cloud X.
Dabieh founded Cloud X with his childhood friend Ben Cross after the pair started throwing underground raves as teenagers. What began with two friends wanting somewhere to hear the music they loved gradually grew into a record label, annual festival and Brixton creative space. When Oculate sat down with the pair for our first digital cover, community came up repeatedly — from the artists they put on stage to their relationship with South London and the people surrounding Cloud X.
Its Brixton base brought recording studios together with spaces for photography, film and collaborative work, while Cloud X has continued to operate across records and live music. The details matter less than the role Dabieh has occupied for years: creating places where artists can make things, meet people and be heard.
That makes friendship an interesting place for his own music to land.
“blunted axe.” takes the idea of connection away from festivals, studios and creative communities and puts it somewhere far less comfortable. What happens when a relationship you valued no longer works? How fairly can you remember somebody when you are angry with them? How much of the past changes once you know how things end?
Dabieh has been circling some of these questions in his own music for a while. Previous releases have dealt with solitude, connection and relationships, giving his writing increasing space alongside the work he has built through Cloud X.
That feels particularly relevant here. Cloud X has given Dabieh years of experience thinking about community on a wider scale, while his own catalogue brings those ideas down to individual relationships and all the complications that come with them. A friendship ending does not have to represent anything bigger. It can simply hurt, leave questions behind and change how two people remember the same years.
That is where “blunted axe. (on friendship)” feels strongest. It does not package friendship as permanently wholesome, and it does not need a villain at the end of it. The interesting part is everything left over when affection and hurt occupy the same memory.
The wider project will take those questions into class, faith, fatherhood and human nature. “blunted axe.” begins much closer to home: two people were once close, now they are not, and working out what that means is far harder than simply moving on.
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