Release Date: Jan 31, 2020
Genre(s): Jazz, Vocal, Pop/Rock, Vocal Jazz
Record label: N/A
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The human voice is often described as an instrument. ALA.NI takes this notion and crams fireworks down its throat as she delivers an album completely created a cappella: mimicking each bowed string and blown reed with her voice box alone. The accuracy with which these sounds are reproduced is incredible. ALA.NI is either a witch, goddess, or very talented singer and arranger - our guess is that she's a little pinch of each.
When 'You & I', the debut album from London-born singer Ala.ni, dropped at the beginning of 2016, it sounded like it had fallen through a wormhole from another age. At a time when the airwaves were so dominated by the squeaky modern club-pop of Sia and Ed Sheeran that even Adele's piano-led soul sounded positively ancient, here was something that cast its net way back, beyond the '80s, '70s or '60s revivals, to capture a sound so long departed that it sounded strangely fresh. Packed with soothing songs about doomed romance, the record was largely dismissed as music to cheat on your spouse to.
"Everyone does their thing a little bit differently," UK singer ALA.NI sings on opening track, "Differently," and the lyrics ring true in this case. ACCA represents her sophomore effort — her first being 2017's You & I — and it is a curious swirl of layered vocal arrangements and sprinkling of strings and bass. The native Londoner, born to parents from Grenada and with an ancestor who was a noted cabaret singer, her musical touch-points are wide and varied genre-wise. The vocals of Iggy Pop — doing his best Leonard Cohen — can ….
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