Soul

Latest CD releases reviewed

GEORGIA ANNE MULDROW
Olesi: Fragments of an Earth Stones Throw ****

Here's a voice to stop you in your tracks. A 22-year-old making fresh sounds at that juncture where soul and jazz begin to turn into interesting funky firewater, Muldrow comes our way with bags of sass and verve. A free-spirited approach to making music is certainly in her genes - her mother performed with Pharoah Sanders and her dad invented instruments for Eddie Harris - and she's got useful leg-ups from such leading-edge production outfits as the Sa-Ra Creative Partners and Platinum Pied Pipers, who spotted her potential at an early stage. But when Muldrow cuts loose, you can hear that her buzz is of another kind entirely. Besides the voice (one part Nina Simone to one part Erykah Badu), her beats are scatty, deep and dense, weaving a slow-motion funk spell that is nigh impossible to resist. You'll return again and again to New Orleans, her majestic riff on contemporary southern woes, and wonder just where she'll go from here. www.stonesthrow.com  Jim Carroll