Last week, Blue Note Records released Blue Note Re:Imagined, a compilation from artists in and adjacent to the current UK jazz scene doing reinventions of classic material within the vast Blue Note catalog. It's got contributions from artists like Jorja Smith, Shabaka Hutchings, Ezra Collective, Nubya Garcia, and Poppy Ajudha, and a relative newcomer that deserves more attention: Skinny Pelembe.
Real name Doya Beardmore, the impossible-to-pigeonhole artist was born in Johannesburg, South Africa before relocating to Doncaster, England where he was discovered by Gilles Peterson's Future Bubblers program and then signed to Peterson's Brownswood Recordings label. He debuted with his self-released 2017 EP Seven Year Curse, before making his Brownswood debut with his 2018 EP Sleep More, Make More Friends, which featured a different Future Bubblers affiliate on each track (including electronic musician Emma-Jean Thackray and soul singer Yazmin Lacey, both of whom are also on Blue Note Re:Imagined). 2019 saw the release of Skinny's first full-length album, Dreaming Is Dead Now). All three of his releases are great, and all find him in a state of constant genre-blurring evolution.