Joy Guidry - Five Prayers (2025) [Hi-Res]

Joy Guidry’s new album, 5 Prayers, is an intuitive convergence of sound, spirit, and radical self-expression. As a deeply respected artist in the experimental and avant-garde music spaces, Guidry continues to push sonic boundaries while remaining deeply connected to Black sonic traditions. Moving away from free-jazz, 5 Prayers moves towards an ambient space.
This album is informed by a deep introspective. The resulting work is a manifestation of self-exploration and liberation, resonating with audiences seeking authenticity, vulnerability, and transcendence in music.

From Kehinde Alonge:
What is the sound of prayer? Is it an echo chamber of reverberating lack? Or might it be a melodic chant summoning the intercession of a deeper self rummaged out of the deadness of today's sorrow? Who hears its tapestry of ambient appeals, and to what end might its sound change the circumstance of the bearer of its weight? Joy Guidry's third full-length album, Five Prayers, wades into the aural textures of these questions with five songs, whose titles and varying meditative sonic terrains fill one's ears with the calm yet firm breath of the bassoon's prayer. Held in the voluminous aliveness of her breath, whose sounds range from the patient and glistening dance between harp plucks and breath on songs like "Hold and Be Held" to the euphoric uptempo bass knocks in" Myles" to the interplanetary exploration of breath latent with synth-electric piano strides on "I Know You're Always With Me," the listener of these prayers can find the will to become a prayer itself—transient yet resolved by the strength of its insistence to demand the refuge of what could always be.