“Sara Serpa’s stunning new multimedia work has its roots in film footage taken a decade earlier in Angola by her grandfather. The Portuguese singer grew up in a family, and a country, that preferred not to discuss centuries of colonisation after it came to an end in the 1970s, but his super-8 movies give a vivid impression of life under white minority rule.

This is a powerfully emotional song cycle, spinning off music of almost undeserved beauty from the horrors of a ruthlessly extractive economy that endured for almost 500 years. It deserves to be heard with the film, at least once, but stands up impressively as an audio work in its own right. (…) Serpa, who has recorded memorably with Ran Blake among others, was voted a rising star in last year’s DownBeat critics poll. Consider her risen.”

Jon Turney, London Jazz News. Read more here.