Kadhja Bonet – The Visitor (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 29:03 minutes | 315 MB | Genre: Soul
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fat Possum
Singer and songwriter Kadhja Bonet’s “The Visitor EP” is an impressive debut. Its songs succeed phenomenally mostly because of Bonet’s vocals and the songs’ lyrics, which appear as contemporary, youthful, versions of the more artistic songs of the American 1960’s and 70’s from artists like Nina Simone or Motown artists, or of French chansons by artists like Barbara. There is a style of soul today that aims to reproduce the aesthetic of past soul for contemporary audiences. Perhaps its most well known practitioner is Leon Bridges, who records onthe major label Atlantic Records; Bonet is, in many ways, the indie version of this style. What her songs offer that others who practice this style of soul do not is poetry. Each song is like a ghost from the past that brings back emotions and yet feels new again.
Genre-defying Kadhja Bonet’s debut The Visitor unveils a world not wholly ours, where past and future meet in a parallel, yet far lovelier present, a timeless, unplaceable realm of her own making. Not quite a one-woman project, The Visitor was written and arranged by Bonet, who also produced, co-engineered and co-mixed the album in addition to playing about half the instruments herself, including guitar, violin, flute and singing backing vocals. The Visitor is uncontaminated by the overproduction that plagues many other releases. It plays through like one individual’s lucid dream in what is sometimes an all-too-dreamless musical landscape, something that’s been harder and harder to find in the last 30 or 40 years, though so badly missed. Bonet has humbly learned from her predecessors while following their signs ever forward.
Tracklist:
01 – Intro: Earth Birth
02 – Honeycomb
03 – Fairweather Friend
04 – The Visitor
05 – Gramma Honey
06 – Portrait of Tracy
07 – Nobody Other
08 – Francisco
Musicians:
Kadhja Bonet – vocal, guitar, violin, flute
Low Leaf – harp
Peter Dyer – synth
Randal Fisher – flute
Itai Shapira – bass
Yohannes Sweeney – drums
Download: