The music of Belgian-Caribbean artist Charlotte Adigéry brims with imagination. Her leftfield pop is sweet, moreish and deliciously unpredictable, topped with engagingly soft vocals. This is all apparent on her recently released second EP, Zandoli, which references the local name for a type of lizard found in Caribbean households – a nod to her Martinique heritage.
The EP showcases DIY, mish-mash sounds, recalling Santigold in its colourful playfulness. Produced by her label bosses Soulwax, it finds Adigéry leaping between subjects and concepts, considering everything from presenting black femininity on High Lights, where she contemplates her array of synthetic wigs over propulsive beats, to cartoonish sex on Cursed and Cussed (“Squeaking leather / skin on skin / latex singing songs of skin”); to whispering intricate loops of Creole on Paténipat. Meanwhile, under her WWWater alias she leans into an experimental, electropunk rabbit-hole, serving up brash, manic sounds reminiscent of Fever Ray; it’s a hard sound that serves as the yin to the yang of the softer, sweeter work under her own name.
Though both iterations are entrancing in their own way, it’s in her eponymous guise that she’ll be heading on support duties for Neneh Cherry’s European tour, as well as some solo dates. Either way, as she said earlier this year, perhaps the personas are incidental to the art itself: “If you dive too deep into the ego, the music will suffer.”
• Charlotte Adigéry plays the Sebright Arms, London, on 18 March and Scala, London, on 19 March
