MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO Vinyl & CDs

Review: 20 years after delivering her debut album, GRAMMY award-winning singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Me'Sgell NgegeOcello returns with her first album since 2018. Meant as a kind of re-set on her career and featuring nods to a wide array of musical influences, The Omnichord Real Book is a genuinely life-affirming affair with few, if any flaws. NgegeOcello makes use of a massive list of guest musicians and vocalists (Brandee Younger, Joan as Police Woman, Jeff Parker and Ambrose Akinmusire included) on tracks that variously mix, match and fuse everything from deep and spiritual jazz, soul, hip-hop and P-funk to highlife, gospel, jazz-dance and much more besides. The sound of the summer!.

Review: "It's a little bit of all of me, my travels, my life," says Meshell Ndgeocello, speaking of her latest album The Omnichord Real Book. Referring to the 'first real book' she ever read - the experience of life after her father's passing - the album is a testament to free-flowing, lived sensoriality in time. An antistatic rip-roar through memory and decay in blue, this is a stunning two-sided jazz-esque album packed with features and far-flung stylisms. In the artist's words, the LP slippily rails against the confines of the word 'jazz' itself. And if you can pull that off, well...