A Voyage Through Space and Genre: A Review of Nala Sinephro's "Endlessness"

Graphic by Monika Krueger

by christian jones

Nala Sinephro’s new album, Endlessness, masterfully interplays between attention and dissipation. It is a gorgeous evolution from her last album, Space 1.8, dissolving the boundaries between the genres that characterize her wholly unique sound: jazz and ambient, spiritual and electronic. Space 1.8 mostly favored unison with each instrument of the compositions working in harmony with one another tonally and rhythmically to create a cohesive atmosphere. As a result, some songs were blissful moods—“Song 1” with its vague chimes, chirping birds, and cricket drone—and others were fit for a jazz club—a piano and saxophone skip around a swanky rhythm in “Song 2.” However, songs such as “Space 5” and “Space 6” foreshadowed the dynamic melding of genres that would become the foreground of Endlessness.

One can just as easily listen to the album and marvel at its textural turns and momentary innovations as they can substitute it for white noise while working at a coffee shop. Even the clarity of the production itself, at times fuzzy and at other times razor-sharp, supports this ambiguity of interest. Sinephro produced and mixed every song, garnering some engineering support from Rick David. She plays harp, synths, and piano on the album, and arranged the strings for the entire album. However, the album owes its spontaneity to Sinephro’s creative exchange with a list of impressive collaborators: James Mollison (Ezra Collective), Morgan Simpson (black midi), Sheila Maurice-Grey (Kokoroko), Nubya Garcia, Lyle Barton, Natcyet Wakili (Sons of Kemet), and Dwayne Kilvington (Wonky Logic).

Endlessness is less about song-to-song continuity and more representative of a loop in infinite variation. Each song is a “continuum,” which can be defined as a coherent whole characterized as a collection, sequence, or progression of values or elements varying by minute degrees (jazz anyone?) The loop at the center of the album is actually an arpeggio. It acts as both law and license: it's a fixed musical motif that maintains a parameter on the continuous flights of inspiration. The effect of this is that while each song presents a fluctuating and unique manifestation of the arpeggio, they never feel that unfamiliar from one another. It seems that this infinitely-yielding code is the quality of being endless, giving the album its crowning title, Endlessness.

“Continuum 1” opens as if you have just awoken from a nap while hurtling through space. An ambient haze of modular synth paints a vast expanse and the syncopated beep-booping layered overtop sounds like stars glittering past. As the drums and saxophone immediately meld into the rhythm of the synths, it becomes clear that we are not hurtling through space but floating along some cosmic current. Control over the speed and direction of this current is passed between the skittering beats and the saxophone’s arpeggiated riffs—slipping back and forth between hypnotizing loops and sharp turns. Then, a bed of strings swells up reminding us to take it all in—Sinephro’s sonic collage of the universe.

“Continuum 2” recasts the scene as punctual synth loops intertwine with jingling piano motifs. A trumpet echoes the piano in soft winding passages, and midway through the song, a buzzing synth pulsates a couple times like some alien fly is circling your head. The drums maintain a feeling of movement amidst the shimmering textures until a bed of strings envelops you like a cloud of stardust: whirling harp strings and light cymbal hits. The movement in “Continuum 3” is led by the modular synth which runs up and down a foundation of soft strings. The alien fly returns on “Continuum 4” for a brief check-in while Sinephro sings—faint, unintelligible, incantatory—like an angel sending a telepathic prayer. Synths fade in and out of focus, hazy or crystalline as if by her command.

There are two approximate climaxes on the album. The first is the progression of “Continuum 5” to “Continuum 6.” It opens with a euphoric wall of strings while a saxophone coos like a lark among the syncopated synths. Then, “Continuum 6” begins with a literal burst: hissing drum hits, ascending modular arpeggios, saxophone croons. These elements strip away leaving only a propelling bass synth line, until each component reemerges and intensifies. Then once again, they strip away leaving arpeggiated synths over a soft pulsing synth bed. The next two tracks, “Continuum 7” and “Continuum 8” follow a similar pattern of materialization and dissipation—the parts are sharp and propulsive, then slow and breathable quickly after. “Continuum 9” is a reprieve before the final track: steady synth loops and saxophone runs with a theremin-like buzz halfway through the track.

The second climax, and final track, “Continuum 10,” features ecstatic runs and loops, a blinding synth drone, crashing drum rolls, even blaring horns—as if you have floated right into the sun. In the last minute of the song, all the noise fades out into a slow, soft, solo piano playing a simple melody that gradually hazes out like an overexposed polaroid: intimate, nostalgic, simple. Then, silence. Back into the void from which you emerged.

If, as Brian Eno said, ambient music “must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” And if jazz is, as Herbie Hancock said, “being in the moment.” Then, Endlessness reveals that the points of convergence between ambient and jazz music are paradoxically repetition and variation. The same loops and arpeggios and syncopations that animate sound are repeated to an almost nullifying effect, though they are still ever-morphing in minute ways. Endlessness also challenges the division between soulful music and electronic music, showing that synths and loops are capable of spiritual ecstasy on par with the music of Pharoah Sanders or Alice Coltrane. Sinephro’s incorporation of electronic elements reminds me of the following Björk quote: “It's so amazing when people tell me that electronic music has not got soul. And they blame the computers. They got the finger pointed at the computers like, ‘There's no soul here.’ You can't blame the computer. If there's not soul in the music, it's because nobody put it there. And it's not the tool's fault.” 

Nala Sinephro weaves all the elements of Endlessness together so naturally it feels like a shimmering landscape tapestry spun in real-time.