Nant

At once calming and unsettling, meditative yet intentionally disquieting, this debut work by new collaboration Poeji gets under your skin and stays there. A duo comprised of Mongolian jazz and ceremonial singer Enji and the ever-experimental German drummer Simon Popp, both leaders in their respective avant-garde fields, their freeform creations float on a bed of spacious, spaced-out invention informed by everything from dub and traditional Mongolian singing to the raw electro-acoustic found sounds of musique concrète. Vocals and percussion are the main instruments on this album, with Enji’s voice weaving between anything-goes jazz vocalese and tremulous and melismatic urtynduu long-song, as she’s done in previous solo recordings including 2023’s also Squama-released and acclaimed Ulaan [a Top of the World in Songlines #191]. But where that record’s original songs came buoyed by bass, drums, guitars and flute, Nant’s otherworldly soundscape is furnished more sparsely by a solitary drum kit deployed with coiled minimalism, and a steel tongue drum whose visceral wallop lends gasp-inducing texture to what feels like a brave new shadow world.