Nala Sinephro Space 1.8

Composer, producer and musician Nala Sinephro showcases her visionary credentials with her debut album Space 1.8. We’re hard-pressed to think of a sound world this cohesive and expansive, a higher realm of composition with ecstatic freedom at every turn, where each drone, melody and cacophonous crescendo equates to a collective feeling of release.

A record occupying an ambiguous state of time, place and mind, Space 1.8 sounds like it could’ve emerged from the golden age of healing music alongside the pioneering work of Laurie Spiegel and Alice Coltrane; a lost classic slept upon by its contemporaneous audience and rediscovered to rapturous praise many decades later — and yet there’s a vitality to its pastel jazz chords and sudden bursts of bilious, free energy that gives it the characteristic of a sound distinct from the music of any age. What’s more with a glowing musical troupe including Nubya Garcia (Jazz re:freshed), Shirley Tetteh (Jazz Jamaica, Groundation, Nérija) Dwayne Kilvington (Wonky Logic, Steam Down) and Eddie Hick (Sons Of Kemet) unfurling its luscious biome of ideas, Space 1.8 is already set to be one of contemporary UK jazz’s key releases.

An absolute triumph of a first disc, Space 1.8 is the utterance of Nala Sinephro’s fully-formed sensibilities; generous, groundbreaking and completely flooring.