''ESKA'' is the eponymous debut album of British singer-songwriter

Eska Eska Mtungwazi (born 1971), known professionally as Eska, is a London-born British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Following her inaugural release as a solo artist with her 2013 ''Gatekeeper EP'', her eponymous debut album, '' ESKA' ...

, released on 27 April 2015. The album was released in collaboration with Naim Records and Eska's own Earthling Recordings. It was shortlisted for the 2015

Mercury Music Prize The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. It was created by Jon Webster and Robert Chandler in association with the B ...

Critical reception

Upon release, ''ESKA'' was received with generally positive reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 82, based on 5 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' wrote that ''ESKA'' was a "mind-bending gem", offering particular praise for "This Is How a Garden Grows". Praise for "This Is How a Garden Grows" was mirrored in ''

Mixmag ''Mixmag'' is a British electronic dance and clubbing magazine published in London. Launched in 1983 as a print magazine, it has branched into dance events, including festivals and club nights. History The first issue of ''Mixmag'' was prin ...

'' who made it a Tune of the Month writing "...having toured and performed with Grace Jones, The Cinematic Orchestra. Writing for ''Uncut'', John Lewis praised Eska escaping of her influences saying, "so distinctive and confessional is Eska's voice she's created a British pastoral music that defies classification". Writing for the ''

Independent on Sunday ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', Howard Male said of the album, "Only a couple of times a decade does a new artist come along who so impresses that I find myself getting excited about what they’ll do next, even as I’m still assimilating their debut." In describing ''ESKA'', Male calls the album "touching, powerful, experimental and sensuous – you could pick just about any positive adjective and it would apply," and in describing the individual tracks, the reviewer states that "each song here is both an independent entity of striking originality and a vital part of a truly cohesive album that is sure to be deemed a classic in decades to come."

Track listing

References

2015 debut albums Eska (singer) albums {{2010s-pop-album-stub