Nilufer Yanya Miss Universe

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Nilüfer Yanya, London's 23 year-old "effortlessly smooth new soul star" (The Fader) releases her hotly-anticipated full length debut, Miss Universe. The 17-track, 2LP collection was largely recorded in the same remote Penzance studio she used to jam in with her uncle Joe – a former musician himself – and features co-productions with both her former school guitar teacher The Invisible's Dave Okumu and her live bandmates Jazzi Bobbi and Luke Bower, as well as producers John Congleton, Oli Barton-Wood, Will Archer and M.T. Hadley. Uniquely blending elements of soul and jazz into intimate pop songs with electronic flourishes and a newly expressed grungy guitar sound, Miss Universe is bigger and more ambitious than anything she's done before.

"Angels," with its muted, harmonic riffs, channels ideas "of paranoid thoughts and anxiety" – a theme that runs through the album, not least in its conceptual spoken word interludes which emanate from a fictional health management company "WWAY Health." "You sign up, and you pay a fee," explains Nilüfer of the automated messages, which are littered through the album and are narrated by the titular Miss Universe. "They sort out all of your dietary requirements, and then they move onto medication, and then maybe you can get a better organ or something...and then suddenly it starts to get a bit weird. You're giving them more of you and to what end?"