Mind Food CD

Last time we heard from Gotan Project founder Philippe Cohen-Sohal, he was releasing the first solo album under his given name - a wholehearted tribute to the French "chanson" sound entitled "Paradis Artificiel(s)". He's changed tack on the follow-up, "Mind Food", revisiting and reworking a range of unreleased tracks he wrote and recorded two decades ago while daydreaming of writing film soundtracks (something he has since done on a number of occasions). The results are predictably impressive, with Cohen-Sohal and a handful of guest musicians and vocalists (Scritti Politti's Green Gartside included) offering up a selection of timeless songs and instrumentals that mix and match neo-classical orchestration, hot-to-trot jazz rhythms, downtempo soul and occasional nods towards both samba and bossa-nova. It's the kind of sumptuous, well-crafted album that the word "timeless" could have been invented to descrive.