How Sault Made the Most Mysterious Albums of the Decade

Sault does not do interviews. They do not tour. For years, nobody even knew who was in the band with certainty. And yet between 2019 and 2024, they released some of the most critically acclaimed music of the decade, blending funk, soul, Afrobeat, punk, and gospel into a sound that felt both ancient and completely futuristic.

The project is widely understood to be led by Inflo, the London-based producer born Dean Josiah Cover, who also produces for Little Simz, Adele, and Michael Kiwanuka. Inflo's fingerprints are unmistakable: lush analog production, live instrumentation layered with electronic textures, and a spiritual intensity that gives even the dance tracks a sense of purpose.

The anonymity is not total so much as administrative. Nobody signs the sleeves, but songwriting has to be registered somewhere, and people worked out the personnel by reading publishing databases. That is how Cleo Sol's name kept turning up next to Inflo's, and how the Chicago rapper Kid Sister got attached to the project. The group has never confirmed a line-up. It has never denied one either, and it keeps releasing music, which tells you how much it thinks the question matters.

Their release strategy was as unconventional as the music. Albums appeared without warning and sometimes disappeared from streaming platforms after weeks. Untitled (Black Is) arrived during the 2020 racial justice protests and captured the moment with a raw urgency that nothing else in music matched. It was available for free download for a limited time, then vanished.

The volume peaked on 1 November 2022, when five albums went up at once as free downloads locked behind a password, godislove, which the group posted separately a few days later. 11, Earth, Today & Tomorrow, AIIR and Untitled (God), released in a single afternoon and free to keep. No label would sanction that. It only works because the records were finished before anyone was asked to schedule them.

The scope of the catalog is staggering. Eleven albums in five years, each one exploring a different sonic territory. 11 went full Afrobeat. AIIR was aggressive post-punk. Earth leaned into ambient spirituality. The consistency across such volume and variety suggests a creative process completely uncontaminated by commercial concerns or focus groups.

Sault proved that in the streaming age, mystery is still possible and potentially more powerful than ever. By refusing to play the promotional game, they made every release feel like an event. No singles, no rollout, no press cycle. Just music, arriving fully formed, demanding you engage with it on its own terms. In a world of content, they made art.

Start with Wildfires. It is under three minutes on Untitled (Black Is), built on a single descending bass figure and a vocal that never raises its voice, and it does more with restraint than most protest records manage with a full choir. From there go to Untitled (Rise), released three months later the same year as the dancing half of the same argument, then to Nine, which was on streaming for exactly 99 days before they deleted it.

https://www.saultglobal.com