Endlessness

‘Endlessness’ is a remarkable record, a project that borrows from dozens of voices while communicating in only one. Somehow eclipsing the magic inherent in her debut, ‘Endlessness’ finds Nala Sinephro operating in a creative universe of her own.

Endlessness continues to show just how sophisticated her palette is while never losing touch with pure feeling. This is music that is good for the ear, the mind, the heart, and the very future of the philosophical orientations of jazz.

It’s hard to say if it is necessarily ‘better’ than its predecessor, but Endlessness is yet another incredible, standout record from arguably the most gifted jazz musician her generation has seen so far.

Sinephro builds on the cosmic shrapnel of her debut Space 1.8, reprising that record's chamber jazz arrangements and buzzing analogue synthlines, its New Age mystique (at the time packaged as ECM overtones) and its knack for gorgeous ambient expanse, all while furnishing the continuity that album's episodic tracklist so patently lacked — but Endlessness does not demand that context, or any, to stand as a great record. This album's draw is as simple and effortless as hearing each and every one of your intuitions for the possibilities of its palette spool out in real time.

Endlessness is more than a crafty marvel, or even than the sum of its vaunted parts. It feels like a feat of physics.

Raw and emotional, the work ripples with atmosphere and melody, each movement brimming with youthful optimism. [Oct 2024, p.65]

These beautiful, spacey, often playful pieces keep up a consistent mood of elegiac meditativeness, peaking in the frankly chipper Continuum 6, full of electro-acoustic joy.

It comes from a place of vulnerability, but speaks the language of strength and self-belief, with enough to share around. [Oct 2024, p.38]

Much like Sinephro's debut, Endlessness is refreshing, enlightening, and awe-inspiring all at once.

If it is a deep dive into the cycle of existence, not everything it brings back to the surface is straightforwardly beautiful or wonder-inducing. It’s more complicated and interesting than that, and therein lies its strange, entrancing power.

Of course, this repetition is the point of a record titled Endlessness, yet it feels like a central motif seemingly existing for its own sake.