Mystic Dance

The third album from the London-based Sudanese-Italian singer Amira Kheir is a tour de force that builds and expands on the rich promise of her 2014 release Alsahraa. What impresses most here is the sheer scope of her stylistic range. Singing in a striking voice full of subtle power, she handles futuristic desert blues, floating Afro-jazz, Arabic rock and traditional Sudanese folk melodies with equal aplomb. The production smartly combines an engaging pop sensibility with an exquisitely poetic elegance. Kheir produced it herself and from the moody rock atmospherics of the opener ‘Amwaj (Waves)’ to the joyously swaying syncopation of the closer ‘Sameeri (Kindred Spirits)’, she doesn't put a foot wrong. The traditional chant ‘Zol (Guy)’ and ‘Manaok (Forbidden)’, an ancient tale of forbidden love given a haunting rock-fusion arrangement, are sung in Arabic, but several of Kheir's own compositions, including the stripped-down minor-key ballad that is the title-track and the jazzy ‘You, Me’, are sung in English. She even tackles Kurt Weill's ‘Speak Low’ and delivers it with a deathless jazz-soul poise to rival Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald's famous versions. A contender for album of the year.