Speak in the Dark cover

Speak in the Dark

Released

The debut album from British Bengali artist Tara Lily is an electronic jazz and soul conceptually based on the artist’s experience with ADHD. Her sound palette is synths, electronic percussion, piano, and string arrangements and the mood is dreamlike, at times pensive, at times blissful. It feels like the songs are built on field recordings and audio reflecting off surfaces, with long cascading reverbs and circling echoes filling up the sound field and generating a gauzy, heady atmosphere. 

Soultronica tracks like “6 Feet Down” with Theo Croker or Surya Sen’s “Like The Ocean” float along on buoyant rhythms with added filmic orchestration with Lily’s voice — a subtle, beguiling instrument — right at the centre of the mix, and while “Breathe Now” and “Double Time” expertly incorporate employ drum & bass beats, the rest of the album is languid in pace, with plenty of space and stillness that very gently ascends into moments of genuine musical beauty. Intense, alluring nocturnica.

Harold Heath

Suggestions
Wise Up Ghost cover

Wise Up Ghost

Elvis Costello, The Roots
Remembers Benny Carter cover

Remembers Benny Carter

The Warren Vaché Quintet
Gentle Eyes cover

Gentle Eyes

Art Farmer
Ritual Union cover

Ritual Union

Little Dragon
Attica Blues cover

Attica Blues

Attica Blues
Bop! Bang! Boom! cover

Bop! Bang! Boom!

Grant Geissman
Castles in the Air cover

Castles in the Air

Stan Strickland, Christine Van Arsdale, Claire Ritter, Steve Swallow, Andrew Blickenderfer, Takaaki Masuko, Johannes Ammon
All the King's Horses cover

All the King's Horses

Grover Washington Jr.