When Pa Salieu arrived in Sydney last December, the idea of distance dissolved almost immediately.

Not because the journey from London is short, because it isn’t, but because Pa has long rejected the idea that geography determines connection. “There’s no such thing as far away,” he tells me matter-of-factly, sitting across from me ahead of his first Australian shows. “Other planets are far away. We’re all we’ve got.”

It is a sentiment that runs quietly but insistently through Afrikan Alien, the 11-track mixtape that marks his return after more than two years away from music and public life. Afrikan Alien is not framed as a redemption arc, nor a victory lap. Instead, it is something rarer: a work defined by patience, clarity and refusal, refusal to be bitter, reduced or categorised.