Where I'm Meant to Be album cover
Where I'm Meant to Be

Ezra Collective

2022
Partisan Records

2022’s Where I’m Meant To Be, the second album for the London five-piece is an exercise in successfully merging their ensemble jazz aesthetic with UK club sounds like afrobeats, UK funky and Afro-Carribean music traditions like reggae and soul. And like much of the new wave of UK jazz, this album is more of a transcendence than an amalgamation: Where I’m Meant… feels less like a blend of genres and more like the emergence of a new style. In an album with plenty of high points, the centrepiece is perhaps the seven minutes of Live Strong, drummer Femi Koleoso’s beats and TJ Koleoso’s fluid bass locking in to create a peak performance groove mechanism while the song slowly unfurls into a truly swinging second half. It’s a mostly celebratory album, full of light and joy and unsurprisingly superbly played.

Harold Heath

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