Singer-songwriter, drummer and multi-instrumentalist Momoko Gill has long been a key background player in the community of jazz-adjacent artists who have coalesced around north London’s semi-legendary Total Refreshment Centre studio complex, live venue and social hub. After spending much of her childhood and teens in Japan and California, Gill was inspired to forge her musical career in multicultural London, initially through collaborations with more established left-field musicians including Matthew Herbert, Alabaster DePlume, Coby Sey and Tirzah. Many of these bigger names repay the favour with guest appearances on this impressively eclectic solo debut, which straddles the line between spiritual jazz, retro-inflected soul and contemporary electronica, to generally fruitful effect. An undertow of political commentary also lurks between these fragrant grooves, mostly latent, occasionally explicit.
Singer-songwriter, drummer and multi-instrumentalist Momoko Gill has long been a key background player in the community of jazz-adjacent artists who have coalesced around north London’s semi-legendary Total Refreshment Centre studio complex, live venue and social hub. After spending much of her childhood and teens in Japan and California, Gill was inspired to forge her musical career in multicultural London, initially through collaborations with more established left-field musicians including Matthew Herbert, Alabaster DePlume, Coby Sey and Tirzah. Many of these bigger names repay the favour with guest appearances on this impressively eclectic solo debut, which straddles the line between spiritual jazz, retro-inflected soul and contemporary electronica, to generally fruitful effect. An undertow of political commentary also lurks between these fragrant grooves, mostly latent, occasionally explicit.
Momoko arrives mere months after Gill’s warmly received collaborative album with Herbert, the excellent Clay, released in June 2025. The pair first worked together on the live shows for Herbert’s 2023 project Horse, a concept album made with musical instruments fashioned from a horse’s skeleton. The feted electronic composer, producer and DJ is also present on Momoko, serving as mix engineer and occasional guest. Gill credits Herbert with expanding her appreciation of sampling, an influence which can be felt on the more experimental tracks, notably “Test In A Small Area”, a brief but arresting instrumental which samples the sounds of the Israeli army blowing up a Palestinian village. Even without knowing the macabre geopolitical context, this is still a powerfully moody track, full of military-industrial shudder and dank turntable clank.
Gill’s drowsy, melismatic, self-harmonising vocals are a major selling point on Momoko, frequently recalling the more accessible end of the 1970s jazz-fusion boom. “Heavy” is a voluptuous blend of old and new, trilling flutes and shimmering harps, sounding incongruously summery in the damp British winter. Meanwhile, more minimal piano-centric ballads like “Ineffably” are studies in wistful introspection, fragile and tremulous, placing the singer firmly in Norah Jones territory. Informed by Buddhism (her brother is a Buddhist monk), the singer’s lyrical ruminations on the healing power of nature, letting go of negative emotions, and finding beauty in the everyday have a vaguely Zen feel. Not hugely original, but their cumulative soul-soothing effect is hard to resist.
Drawing on vintage analogue soul and jazz-funk, Gill’s emphatically trad reference points are counterbalanced by a more sonically adventurous, dissonant undertow. Dive deep into its meticulously layered production and Momoko becomes a headphones album par excellence. Indeed, the eerily seductive “Satellite” signals this tendency early with its delicately woven audioscape of drones and moans, strums and sighs, half-whispered words and ghostly echoes.
Several more substantial tracks, notably “Rewind/Remind” and “Anyway, I’m Drowning”, have a dystopian trip-hop feel, invoking the avant-blues urban hinterland of DJ Shadow or vintage Massive Attack. The stand-out number in this vein is “Shadowboxing”, its stuttering beats, low-end rumbles and looping rhythms adding psychodramatic shading to nervy lyrics that seem to dissect a borderline abusive relationship: “You don’t want to let me go, and you’re breaking…”
Momoko is not without blind spots and dead ends. In more anodyne moments, especially “River”, Gill leans uncomfortably close to tinselly lounge-bar balladry. As emotional and political statements, her opaque confessionals also tend towards the non-committal. “Trying to explain, hoping in vain,” she coos over silky brass and skittering grooves on “No Others”. “I’m still not sure if this is right for us,” she frowns during the sparkly, softly undulating “2Close2Farr”. There is a thin line between tasteful restraint and airy abstraction, nuanced understatement and no statement at all.
That said, the most unambiguous lyrical message here is the boldly titled “When Palestine Is Free”, a late addition to the album that became something of a rousing, urgent centrepiece. Herbert, Shabaka Hutchings, Soweto Kinch, Alabaster DePlume, Rozi Plain, Coby Sey and more join a stellar background choir of 50-plus guests, lending their voices to a fleet-footed jazzy reverie that swirls and swerves around its simple refrain “we’re only free, when Palestine is free.”
As a commentary in the ongoing horrors of the Israel/Gaza conflict, this simple sing-along nursery rhyme is unlikely to win any Nobel Prizes. But it works fine as an open-hearted expression of empathy, global solidarity and even cautious optimism. As with most of Momoko, muted emotions and subtle details are key elements here. Gill could afford to be a little more lyrically strident and sonically ambitious in places, but this is still a very strong debut, an album full of quiet storms that grow louder with close listening.
The post Momoko Gill’s Momoko reviewed: jazzy electronica, spiritual soul-searching and political commentary on fertile debut appeared first on UNCUT.
