10 years of failure. That’s how you’d describe Sister Wanzala’s “career” to date. They broke out in 2016 proudly proclaiming that their self styled “cold funk” would make people dance and cry. They promised to comfort those mourning Prince, Bowie, Cohen and Michael.

But did they? No. A thousand vinyl copies of debut Bodies On the Loose EP (2016) slowly warped under lead singer Patrick Wanzala-Ryan’s bed. The sole highlight of their The Circus EP (2019) is that it only lasts 17 minutes and 10 seconds. In 2022, fresh out of the pandemic, they released Perfume, which is an ok song. Top Drawer followed, which would be an ok song for a different band.

So what now? Another song? It looks like it.

The new song is “Now You’re Mine”. For this next attempt the brothers (Patrick, Mark and Chris Wanzala-Ryan) headed back to basics. Back to cold funk. Using their only good song “Shy Heat / Heaven” as reference. But not the bloated, auto-tuned belch you’ll find hovering at a paltry 12.5k listens on Spotify. Rather the sultry home recording that caught a wave on soundcloud of all places and led them to appear on Channel 4’s Four to the Floor along fellow rising star Little Simz.

So, how are the results? Is it funky? Yeah. After the intro’s gameshow jazz chord workout the drum and bass knock into the kind of sinewey groove that might get a crowd dancing if they really wanted to.

Is it cold? Again, yes, just about. Blurred guitars slice across the groove and nothing like listening to a man yelping “no one ever put me first, no one ever asked me why” to freeze one over.

Is it a success? Time will tell. But it won’t matter, if Sister Wanzala follow their usual trajectory they’ll split up at Christmas and return in 2028 with a new song “that is really cold funk this time we swear”.

Now You're Mine

Dancing and crying since 2015.
New song "Now You’re Mine" out 17 October 2025.
sisterwanzala@gmail.com