Raizes

As one of the UK’s most prolific Brazilian musicians, the percussionist Adriano Adewale has amassed an impressive list of credits that includes Joanna MacGregor, Christine Tobin and Zoe Rahman amongst others. Here, on an album billed as the second in a trilogy following 2008’s Sementes, he locks dreads with fellow UK-based Brazilian jazzer Marcelo Andrade, kora player Kadialy Kouyaté and bassist Nathan Riki Thomson. The result is a series of loose percussive essays linked vaguely by a theme of the elements and dominated by the fluid improvisations of Andrade’s alto flute and soprano sax.

You’d never guess it was co¬produced by Chris Kimsey, a legendary rock sound engineer. Kimsey’s lightness of touch even extends to vocals on opener ‘Sunflower Song’, though the album’s obvious and transporting highlight is ‘Moon Shade’. Trickling into life on rippling kora and eddies of sax, the track drifts, melts and resolves in nigh-on six exquisite minutes – it’s possibly Adewale’s most gorgeous and fully realised composition to date. The epic ‘River Rocks’ is even longer, culminating in a frantic dialogue between Andrade and guest cellist Jenny Adejayan. Featuring Adewale on pandeiro drum and Andrade on spine-raking rabeca fiddle, the album’s latter half is much more overtly Brazilian, with ‘Trees’ in particular being reminiscent of the great percussionist Papete.