Still only in her 20s, it’s not hyperbole to say that Nala Sinephro is taking modern jazz by the lapels and giving it a right old shake. She has been described before, in an interview with Pitchfork, as a ‘soft-spoken sage… and a fiery disruptor’. Both personae are present and correct on her glorious second album, Endlessness. 

This Caribbean-Belgian harpist (an instrument, it seems, she wishes to be no longer associated with) arrived with a cosmic splash in 2021 as she launched Space 1.8 into the covid void, a largely ambient affair with swirling pockets of drama and danger. That collection was not so much nu-jazz as un-jazz, making labels almost redundant in a firestorm of beauty.   

Almost inevitably, this album (like that lauded debut) features contributions from people residing in all the highly regarded alt-jazz bands du jour, from Ezra Collective to Sons Of Kemet and black midi to Kokoroko, plus floating solo acts such as Nubya Garcia and Lyle Barton. It’s not quite painfully cool but it’s not far off. Mesmerising, meditative, transcendent, delicate. Words that are thrown at her work not simply because they sound good, but because she sounds good.

For the first half of Endlessness, comprising tracks called ‘Continuum 1’ through to ‘Continuum 5’, the pace is glacial and the mood lush. But then the pace steps up, with the synth getting ever more frantic as though someone has cruelly turned up the speed on your running machine; horns become more insistent, percussion less controlled, both a threat to your sense of balance.    

And eventually, ever so suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, in the last 45 seconds of this record the cacophony fades out and a Max Richter-esque piano sequence enters the fray, only to dip and exit itself as quickly as it arrived. There has to be a reason for this last-minute twist. Could it be that Sinephro is hinting at what’s next to come in the latest stage of an ever-evolving musical career? She could very easily be doing this for at least another half century, so ebbs, flows and tangents will surely play a significant part of that gameplan. Whatever she has in mind, it will be fascinating to see where it takes her and us. 

Endlessness is out now released by Warp Records.