Nubya Garcia – Odyssey

★★★★

Released September 20th, 2024 on Concord Jazz

I have been playing a lot of No Man’s Sky lately. I think it’s closer to my vision of what Minecraft was when I’d merely heard of Minecraft and not played it. It is not as in-depth and varied as, say, Dwarf Fortress, but it is far more beautiful and more immediately immersive. It’s a journey, and that’s probably why I’ve been using it to soundtrack exploring the universe since it came out.

Nubya Garcia’s jazz bona fides are without question. Her sax playing has been an integral, soulful part of the resurgent London jazz scene. Right from her first EPs back in 2018, she made her name alongside players like Shabaka Hutchings, Yazz Ahmed, Theon Cross, and Moses Boyd. She is the flip side to Hutchings’ sharp, insistent playing; her sax work approaches subtly and then soars upward, carried on a hot wind of pure feel. On Odyssey she reaches beyond that. The album is a mélange of her signature spiritual jazz shot through with dub and Afrobeat influences, combined powerfully with sweeping string sections. It’s an orchestral version of London neo-jazz, expansive and all-encompassing. It’s equally at home bounding across toxic environments searching for uranium deposits as it is gunning the pulse engines and diving into the asteroids to avoid pirates.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t advance her artistry in any sense; it’s still a Nubya Garcia record. The second album is where the artist will typically double down on their strengths, and Odyssey is very much a second album. While you could make the argument that it is a comfort zone type of record, it expands that zone significantly at the edges. There’s a track on that Pharoah Sanders/Floating Points/LSO record, “Movement 6”, that absolutely freaks out someone I know whenever it comes on. By contrast, there is nothing on Odyssey that will freak anybody out – it’s very crowd-friendly, technical without being intense, R&B vibes kind of jazz. With that said, it is then obviously very listenable, and you will probably find yourself listening to it often, once you start.