Five years since her Grammy-nominated leap forward file Jog over Colombia, singer and producer Lido Pimienta has taken an intensive shift in course. On Jog over Colombia, Pimienta combined sprightly electro pop with cumbia rhythms and hovering vocals to critique racism and misogyny – now, her fourth album La Belleza (The Elegance) is a nine-song orchestral suite relating to every little thing from Gregorian chant to strings-laden enjoy songs and dembow rhythms.

Impressed by Catholic requiem mass song and the honest harpsichord folks of Czech composer Luboš Fiser’s to find to 1970 movie Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett began writing and arranging for the 60-share Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra at some stage in the Covid lockdowns. The result is a bright work of outstanding depth.

There could be drama aplenty. Pimienta harnesses the trilling tension of the Philharmonic’s strings piece on the militaristic tone of Ahora, meant as a wrestle cry for her Indigenous Wayuu roots. Aún Te Quiero employs thrumming counterpoint phrasing in the horn piece as Pimienta sings a lament for her past self, and El Dembow del Tiempo ingeniously layers a percussive dembow rhythm over baroque flutes, producing an extremely propulsive current sound.

While the instrumentals are deftly organized and normally stunning, it’s Pimienta’s agile, flawless vocals that take the account for: without ache doubling the craving trumpet melodies of requiem mass song on Overturn, performing a sweet, hovering falsetto on the discontinue of Ahora, powerfully leaping thru glissandos on the harp-plucking of Mango and layering poignant, beefy-throated harmonies on closer Busca La Luz. Ascending from whispered intimacy to bellowing power as she yearns for affection on Quiero Que Me Beses (I Desire You to Kiss Me), her maturing affirm is as charming because the could well of any orchestra.

Also out this month

Egyptian producer Elkotsh’s debut album Rhlt Jdi (Nyege Nyege Tapes) combines doom-laden synth bass with celebratory mahraganat rhythms to manufacture a thunderous current blend. The hammering techno kick drums and siren-like melodies of Mwlid Ala’sar are an infectious highlight. A brand current compilation of unreleased song from Cameroonian musicologist Francis Bebey, Trésor Magnétique (Africa Seven), is an Afrofuturist treasure trove, blending every little thing from drum machines with mbira melody to breathy pygmy flutes with synth buzz, confounding genre definitions from the 1970s onwards. Singer Manika Kaur’s most contemporary album Devocean (Six Degrees) is a soothing series of non secular song from Arabic, Sikh, Celtic and Indigenous traditions. At events in hazard of straying against wafting Fresh Age ambience, tracks like Māori song Wakan Tanka arrange to search out poignancy in the blend of Kaur’s gossamer affirm with the earthy didgeridoo.