Nawa, the first composition on Mali Obomsawin’s new album Automatic, is less than forty seconds long, but it has an immediate effect. It is at once destabilising and centring: the nature of the sound – a chant-like vocal with a wobbly, echoing musical backlight – is enough to upset any preconceived notions of what jazz and folk music should sound like in 2026, but it is done with such confidence that it situates the listener right at the heart of Obomsawin’s very specific soundworld. It’s the first of many indications that Automatic is a stylistic left-turn, and a successful fulfilment of Obomsawin’s wish to defy the unethical and oppressive systems that hold up the music industry, ‘to make a record they couldn’t own.’
This all comes after the critical success of her debut, 2022’s Sweet Tooth. That album had an unexpected aftermath: Obomsawin, a citizen of Abenaki First Nation, was forced to engage with institutions – venues, press outlets – whose own histories were littered with examples of exploitation. Automatic is a record on her own terms, and as such it is full of complex textures worn lightly. As a bassist and singer, Obomsawin stretches the notions of genre until they are practically unrecognisable. Her work exists, for the most part, within the massive scope of jazz, but she breaks away from its idioms to create something fluid and alive. The title track begins with an earthy, structured crunch and then grows outward in multiple directions at once: free-form sax pulls at the melodic seams while Zack O’Farrill’s tough drums rumble around like a storm in a valley. Above it all, Obomsawin’s vocals in dialogue with a recording of her great-grand relative, Malian, dissolve into unity.
Malian’s voice appears again, in an eponymous track later on in the album. Here, the vocals and Obomsawin’s playful bass rise up through a sound that is decayed and discordant, exploring notions of age, continuity and disruption. She uses improvisation as a primary means of engaging with these ideas. Kojua II is perhaps the most notable and extreme example of her improvisatory flair. It begins as a subtle dance between bass and trumpet, but at the halfway point it turns, holds its breath for a spell, and seems to gather force around itself, culminating in a rapturous swell.
Many of her songs run this structural gamut from tranquillity to chaos. O’temin’s first half is defined by long, wordless hums and peaceful, extended brass notes, before a sudden shift into an exhilarating, squawking finale of sonic experimentation. Triage sees her set electronically sampled, manipulated voices against a sleepy brass duet before the piece opens out with an explosion of percussion and rhapsodic soloing. Moi, Quand J’y Suis, by contrast, retains a certain playful serenity throughout. A riff on a Charles Mingus theme, it is both a loving homage and an accomplished piece of improvisation. On the closing track, Venez, she takes a different approach again, foregrounding the recorded archival voices to highlight the close relationship between her ancestral heritage and her current practice. Here, perhaps, is where we begin to understand the power that music has to make our linear notion of time dissolve. It’s a startling revelation, and one that makes you want to go right back to the start and listen to this moving and masterful album all over again.
Automatic (October 16th, 2026) Out Of Your Head Records