Nabihah Iqbal: Dreamer (Ninja Tune/digital outlets)

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Nabihah Iqbal: Dreamer (Ninja Tune/digital outlets)

Very much an artist's artist – she was commissioned to compose music for the Turner Prize, an exhibition at the Tate Modern and a Basquiat retrospective – this London-born child of Pakistani parents has also worked as a broadcaster, lecturer and in the field of human rights.

This belated second album following her acclaimed 2017 debut Weighing of the Heart was conceived during lockdown in Pakistan where she was stuck while visiting her grandparents.

But there's no introspective, poor-me or poor-world going on here.

This is mostly synth-driven, widescreen sonic grandeur which some how manages to take New Order into atmospheric space-rock, bring tense vocals together with the emotional coolness of Pet Shop Boys and drag Bauhaus and the Cure into a disco where the DJ favours retro-beats (the excellent This World Couldn't See Us).

It reigns itself in for the gentle chime and string-strum of the instrumental Lilac Twilight (zither perhaps?) and the atmospheric Sweet Devotion.

But mostly, enjoyable and lyrically interesting though it is, this rarely manages to establish much musical personality beyond an autograph sound which draws heavily on its antecedents.

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You can hear this album at bandcamp here



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