Pop boasts few ascents more mercurial than that of <person>Jacob Collier</person>, the north London wunderkind whisked from YouTube videos to the care of legend <person>Quincy Jones</person>, thence to Grammy recognition and global adoration. Two years ago, In My Room announced an ambitious talent grounded in jazz and pop history. <person>Djesse</person> goes further, a quartet of albums written in 2018 with more instalments to come next year. We are promised “a grand tour through space and time”, but volume one is more a tour of <person>Jacob</person>’s record collection. Among influential guests are vocal harmony outfits Take 6 and Voces8, Gnawa drummer <person>Hamid El Kasri</person>, <person>Laura Mvula</person> and an overweight <person>Metropole Orkest</person>.
Predictably, <person>Djesse</person> falls foul of its own grandiosity. The opening dawn evocation is six minutes of shapeless a cappella. Its songs are jerked around by fussy arrangements and abrupt rhythm shifts. <person>Collier</person>’s voice is agile and tuneful but uncommanding – he prefers to hide in harmony vocals – while an enjoyably snazzy cover of the Police’s Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic underlines that he is yet to deliver a killer tune of his own. So far, Collier’s undoubted magic is only intermittent.