One Takes by Daymé Arocena

The One Takes EP finds Daymé Arocena bouncing around ideas with label boss Gilles Peterson to put her unique spin on five different covers. Re-imagining cuts ranging from Italian obscurities to US house heroes, the sessions (as you might guess from the title) were about taking down whichever ideas came first. Working in a tradition of covers that's long been ingrained in jazz as well as Latin music, One Takes finds them taking that approach and running with it.

It's a perfect vehicle for Daymé to bridge musical worlds in a way that's always come naturally. With an upbringing split between classical training, early jazz greats like Billie Holiday and the spiritual and musical foundations of the Santería religion, she's grown up seeing the bigger picture.

Daymé's versatility meant he could throw dancefloor shakers at her – like Peven Everett's 'Stuck' – along with super-rare cuts like Rafaella Renzulli's 'Asking Eyes', which he witnessed Patrick Forge deploy to maximum effect on the dancefloor at last year's Dingwalls reunion.

'Gods Of Yoruba', meanwhile, is a Horace Silver composition and 'El 456' is a Los Britos track which Gilles says “has always been a bit of a joker card for me at gigs”. 'African Sunshine', finally, is by Sun R Arkestra initiate Eddie Gale. The finished EP is almost as much a tour through interesting corners of Peterson's record collection as it is through Daymé's range as a performer.

Digital album & CD include bonus track: Muy cerquita de ti (Close to You)

Relying on instinct and intuition is how Arocena has managed her career since she burst in the international scene with Nueva Era, her prodigious debut album, in 2015. Now, she has fully reinvented her sound with Al-Kemi (Brownswood Recordings), a revolutionary – and transformative – fusion of neo soul singing, Afro-Caribbean beats and slick new millennium pop.

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