Roulette (Sekito)
Alfa Mist
Released October 2, 2025
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2025
YouTube:
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About:
On his sixth studio release Roulette, the prolific producer, songwriter, pianist and MC Alfa Mist has created his own sci-fi universe – a vast dystopia where themes of revenge, forgiveness and redemption loom large.
Alfa Mist’s albums have always tackled big themes. This time, however, he explores an imagined near-future in which reincarnation is discovered to be a potent tool linking dreams and past lives. But with this discovery comes consequences: ethical, moral and philosophical. “If reincarnation is real, how does that shape society?” he explains. “If reincarnation means accumulation of knowledge, would you share it and enable everyone to understand more about the world? Or do you struggle for power? And do some people want to stop others from remembering who they were?”
Over 15 tracks, Alfa explores these ideas with heady potency. Each song is a spin of the wheel – a different song and character. The musician’s signature is still there – lambent keys, intuitive groove, free-flowing jazz improvisation – but Roulette is imbued with a smoky psychedelia. An immersive listen, this album is designed “to feel” on every level, says Alfa. It also contains some of his most impressive arrangements yet – see the eight-minute title track that effortlessly flips through time signatures – “because life’s like that,” says Mist; it’s not always linear.
Roulette underlines Alfa Mist as one of the most forward-thinking composers in UK music, with poignant, plaintive melodies that lodge deep in your psyche. “I’m exploring different parts of myself,” he says. “But obviously, as I grow, all of those parts change. Music is a constant; it’s my state of mind that I constantly chisel and work on and make sure that’s always growing and staying interested in new things. As long as I do that, it’ll come out in the music.”
Track Listing:
1. Reincarnation (Alfa Mist / Homeboy Sandman) 03:09
2. Roulette (Alfa Mist) 07:39
3. You’re Not Blind (Alfa Mist) 01:12
4. All Time (Alfa Mist / Tawiah) 03:48
5. Between Lives (Alfa Mist) 02:39
6. 9 Months (Alfa Mist) 03:34
7. Found You (Alfa Mist) 05:19
8. Dersen Café (Alfa Mist) 02:04
9. Always Be (Alfa Mist / Kaya Thomas-Dyke) 03:28
10. Avoid the Drones (Alfa Mist) 02:52
11. Who Were You? (Alfa Mist) 01:43
12. Give Nothing (Alfa Mist) 02:00
13. Give Anything (Alfa Mist) 02:04
14. From East (Alfa Mist) 05:52
15. Black Snow (Alfa Mist) 05:43
Personnel:
Alfa Mist: keys, synths, vocals
Kaya Thomas-Dyke: bass, vocals
Jamie Leeming: guitar
Samuel Rapley: sax, bass clarinet
Peggy Nolan: cello
Johnny Woodham: trumpet, flugelhorn
Jamie Houghton: drums
Dornik Leigh: drums (11)
Lucy Nolan: viola (6)
Laura Senior: violin II (6)
Simmy Singh: violin I (6)
Mixed & Produced by Alfa Mist
Recorded & Mixed at Invada
Engineer & Additional Mixing: Stuart Matthews
Strings Recorded at Lightship 95, by David Holmes
Mastered by Guy at Electric Mastering
Front Cover Painting: Kaya Thomas-Dyke
Illustration: Mathias Lematire Sgard
Design: Patch D Keyes
Review:
Roulette is the sixth long-player by London-based multi-instrumentalist, rapper, composer, and producer Alfa Mist. Since releasing Epic, his debut EP in 2014, he’s created an integrated sound that organically weaves together 21st century jazz, hip-hop, soul, and classical music. Mist is a musical world builder. On the 15-track Roulette, he imagines a sci-fi universe of the near-future. Reincarnation is no longer a spiritual concept but a scientific reality, where it serves as a potent tool able to link present dreams to past lives. While the possibilities are limitless, there are also consequences to debate on ethical, moral, and philosophical grounds. He extended the album’s idea with a comic based on its themes, with illustrations by artist James Rueben. In Mist’s imagined world, all lives — current and past — are held on permanent record. Governments use them to legislate and prosecute.
Mist is accompanied by his standing quintet and appended by the Amika Quartet, who collaborated with him on 2024’s excellent Recurring (Live at King’s Place). Mist raps some, but he is accompanied by vocalists who include New York rapper Homeboy Sandman, Brit-soul queen Tawiah, and vocalist and polymath multi-instrumentalist, Kaya Thomas-Dyke (his bassist).
Opener “Reincarnation” finds Homeboy Sandman flowing above the piano, trumpet, saxophone, and organic beats in modern soul-jazz with psych undertones (the entire album is lightly saturated in the latter). The title track is introduced by strings before Johnny Woodham’s flugelhorn, Mist’s electric piano, Jamie Leeming’s reverbed electric guitar, Thomas-Dyke’s bass, and Samuel Rapley’s saxophones atop Jamie Houghton’s drumkit join in a sultry noir-ish vamp before Woodham solos and is reintegrated, then Mist solos and transforms the tune into glorious pastoral fusion. It segues into “All Time.” Fingerpicked electric guitar, a guiding bassline, and the leader’s synth frame the spacious, gorgeous vocals by Tawiah offering a lyric about time: the way we grasp at it, chase it, and are undone by it. “Between Lives” is a brief jazz tune about the bardo — the space of emptiness that lies between death and rebirth. Mist’s electric piano meets strings in a modal melody painted by bass, guitar, and a very blue saxophone. Mist delivers the rap on the glorious “9 Months,” a lilting yet sultry jazz jam juxtaposing possibility, consequence, and transcendence in the occurrence of repeated reincarnation amid saxophone, flute, synth, beats, and textured ambience. On “Always Be” Thomas takes the sweet, honeyed lead vocal on the ontological questions about reincarnation: “So who are you the day that life begins again?” It flows into the transcendent jazz instrumental “Avoid the Drones,” revealing power and elegance by the instrumentalists. Closer “Black Snow” is a flowing ballad woven through modal lyricism, blues, and silvery post-bop to send the thought-provoking set off with blue notes. Though all of Mist’s recordings are worth investigating, Roulette is easily his most realized and sophisticated project to date.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
