Endless

the endless, Nala's second disc Sinephro focuses on an arpeggio. The London-based composer shapes this rising phrase, expands it, plays it more lento, and lets it slip into invisibility and fade away. It carries us like a tide through the album's 10 tracks, all called “Continuum” – a perfect name for each, though this LP isn't a series of variations on a single composition. Listen closely and its details transform at an unrelenting clip. Let your mind drift and its 45 minutes are like a lake: wide, serene, consistent if ever flat.

Raised on the outskirts of Brussels by a Belgian mother and a father with roots in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the 28-year-old has the cool breeze of ambient music and the strong winds of jazz at her back. It came as the union of these species was finally losing its streak, during the dark days of COVID-2021. Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders' Promises arrived in March, an event that paired the electronic perfectionist on the same bill as the elder-statesman saxophonist, along with the London Symphony Orchestra. Sinephro's sparkling debut, Space 1.8he fell in September of that year, as if he knew a mantle was waiting to be lifted. She had recorded the record in 2018 and 2019, but that made her arrival all the more unusual — when was the last time a couple of jazz records, released a few months apart, seemed to talk to each other, disagree, find common ground, and thinking about a future for the form?

However, Sinephro transcends borders. Endless dissolves the binaries that define ambient jazz and imagines a third genre of music that thrives in their midst. Its inconsistency distinguishes Sinephro's second album from its still excellent predecessor, which was alternately atmospheric and bluesy. This is more coherent, more elegant. Endless it merges sensibilities with the naturalness of DNA strands bound together in a double helix. It proves the durability of ambient jazz and makes the two terms mutually redundant.

Sinephro has grown significantly as a studio mastermind and bandleader over the past five years. He produced and mixed every song Endlessmaking them with partner Rick David. He also arranged all the chords on the record – never sugary or maudlin, they feel poignant and as judicious as any other instrumental feature. Sinephro plays harp, piano and synths both solo and with other friends from the South London jazz scene. EndlessSoul is the energy of the session, the ability of the musicians in a room to exchange ideas in real time.