Snowdome

Nigerian artist Wayne Snow had made a growing mark with earlier releases before 2025’s Snowdome but said effort, another excellent example of a half-hour collection feeling like a proper full album at ten tracks, further showed the excellence at work. Starting with the drifting dreaminess of the title song, which he described in interviews as a nod to Salvador Dali’s famed melting clocks, Snow shifts with swift ease between bold vocal forcefulness, sweeter falsetto turns and more, touching on musical and vocal styles from around the world as he went. Everything from cool early 80s electronic r’n’b moodiness to acoustic soul-folk grooves turns up, filtered through a crisp, elegantly precise sense of delivery his vocals accentuate as the human element. Besides his effective brevity, Snow has a really good sense of how to sequence his work; everything is exactly where it needs to be throughout. For example, the stern synths underpinning “Fearless” and its sudden chants lead into a bouncy but coolly serene flow on “Cold Zone,” Snow’s singing a striking beam of warmth the whole arrangement hangs off of well.