''Kalak'' (stylized as ''KALAK'') is the fourth studio album by

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

-based jazz musician

Sarathy Korwar Sarathy Korwar is a US-born, Indian-raised, London-based drummer, percussionist, composer and bandleader. He works predominantly in a jazz and Indo jazz field but also incorporates elements of hip-hop, and other fusions. Background Born in t ...

. The album, which was produced by Photay, was released via

The Leaf Label The Leaf Label is a British independent record label based in Yorkshire, England. Initially an electronic music label, releasing mainly instrumental music, the company's approach now features artists spanning jazz and post-punk. History The Le ...

on 11 November 2022.

Artwork

The album's cover was created by Sijya Gupta and Fabrice Bourgelle. The cover is based on

sacred geometry Sacred geometry ascribes symbolic and Sacred, sacred meanings to certain geometry, geometric shapes and certain geometric Proportion (architecture), proportions. It is associated with the belief that a god or goddess is the creator of the univer ...

. The circular symbol on the cover represents the circular nature of time and music.

Release

The lead single, "Utopia Is a Colonial Project", was released on 16 August 2022, with a music video directed by Elliott Gonzo.

Critical response

''Kalak'' received positive reviews from critics upon its release. 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 mainstream publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 87, based on six reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Aggregator

AnyDecentMusic? AnyDecentMusic? is a website that collates album reviews from magazines, websites, and newspapers. Primarily focused on popular music – covering rock, pop, electronic, dance, folk, country, roots, hip-hop, R&B, and rap – albums are adjudg ...

gave it 8.0 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus. The album was featured on multiple publications' year end lists. Suraya Mohamed of

NPR Music NPR Music is a project of National Public Radio, an American privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization, that launched in November 2007 to present public radio music programming and original editorial content for music ...

placed the album in her top ten of 2022. Jim Carroll, writing for

RTÉ (RTÉ) (; Irish language, Irish for "Radio & Television of Ireland") is the Public broadcaster, national broadcaster of Republic of Ireland, Ireland headquartered in Dublin. It both produces and broadcasts programmes on RTÉ Television, telev ...

, ranked the album as the second best album of 2022. John Mulvey of ''

Mojo Mojo may refer to: *Mojo (African-American culture), a magical charm bag used in voodoo Arts, entertainment and media Film and television * MOJO HD, an American television network * ''Mojo'' (play), by Jez Butterworth, made into a 1997 film * '' ...

'' ranked it as the 39th best album of 2022 out of 110.

References

{{reflist The Leaf Label albums 2022 albums