Co-hosting his flamboyant PDA club nights, Akinola forged an even deeper connection to sound. In the nightclub environment he recalls a profound sense of liberty. “Sound in that moment is quite astral. It makes you time travel… It’s physical, standing right by the speaker and having different DJs play and mix different genres together.” Going further, his description becomes almost spiritual. “Being in a space where all the energy in that space is geared towards the same direction is quite rare. It's almost quite divine, in a way. That's what the party felt like for me. It became this almost divine, hedonistic space of pure escapism.”

The same qualities can be found in Akinola’s films, in which he selects music for its spiritual and transportive qualities. “I think that's really what sound is,” he says. “It’s the emotion of an image. The image is the story… but sound kind of crystallizes the emotion. It leads people to where you want them to be, or how you want them to feel.” Until it has music added, he is rarely sure of a piece of film. “I'm not very emotionally invested in an edit until the score is made,” he says.

His award-winning film Lizard, scored by Tim DeWit, formerly of New York experimental electronic band Gang Gang Dance, is a perfect example. “Lizard’ is quite a normal drama, but it has some magical realist elements. By putting sound that's more evocative of a sci-fi or thriller you've thrown everyone off already.” You can experience the same effect in his other work: from the ethereal, ambient electronic music in the hypnotic, Nigeria based documentary short ‘Zazzau’ to the symphonic broken-beat rhythms on BBC production ‘Black to Life’; and from the vibrant and uplifting sounds of Sampa The Great on ‘Dance Accepts Everyone’ for Facebook, to the slow-grooving funk in the stylish ‘Out of Fashion’ for Red Wing Shoes.

“It’s one of the most important tools at your disposal,” he explains how sound “plays a huge function in an audience buying into a film — whether it’s sound design, licensed sound, or original composition. People have to be immersed or submerged in what you’re doing.” It’s no surprise then, that music often comes early in his creative process — he makes playlists to set the tone for his collaborators. While it sets the tone, sound is also the icing on the cake; the glue that holds everything together in the final product. Throughout the entire production sound is of the utmost importance, he says, because “people forgive bad picture, but they won’t forgive bad sound.”

With a narrative feature and a documentary feature both now in the pipeline, Akinola says he’s become obsessed with “getting the story right.” And while he remains tight-lipped on these new stories for now, one thing’s for certain — as so many of his past works have already emphasised, “music will definitely play a big part."

“I think in cooking, sound design would probably be like the onion or the garlic,” says Akinola, as he ponders his atmospheric, mood-driven playlist. “It just kind of brings out the texture and the flavour and enhances everything, or leads you in a particular direction.” The music he’s chosen reflects the changing atmosphere and themes of Lizard. “My playlists are so particular. I have to pick every song and there needs to be a really specific mood, and it needs to last 45 minutes, an hour max” With a carefully sequenced set of profoundly immersive tracks, Akinola’s Amplified playlist can be experienced as if it’s a complex movie in itself.