Olesi: Fragments of an Earth

If Dudley Perkins was an early fixture of the Madlib / Stones Throw universe, his wife Georgia Anne Muldrow held a more fleeting yet notable role on the label — the first woman to be signed, if only briefly, where she announced the start of a still-flourishing career in avant-soul-jazz with a debut album that already sounded like a fully-formed life statement. In tune with a spirituality somewhere between the expansive meditations of Alice Coltrane and the funky reinforcement of Erykah Badu, she produced and sequenced Olesi to reveal often small but always powerful fragments of a style where her soaring, searching voice is just the start of a deep immersion in an unfamiliar but welcoming new galaxy.