Aanya Martin offers mid-winter relief through meditative, jazzy grooves on “Rhythm For The Blues”

“Rhythm For The Blues” follows December’s sauntering, stripped-down “Shadows.” Where that song leaned into a more classic, minimal jazz setup, Martin’s latest track shows off the malleability of the genre. Martin develops an Amaarae-meets-Charles Mingus type of jazz-house groove, with a soft marimba backbeat, hypnotic conga riffs, and entrancing trombone slides. The repetitive beat adds a slight ambient lean, making the track something you could imagine playing in a better-than-five-star hotel in Miami. Martin’s breathy, melodic vocals match the laid-back, meditative instrumentation.

The track chronicles Martin’s experience being entranced by jazz music. She name-drops Dave Brubeck and his hit “Take Five,” telling listeners about how it feels when she falls deep into a song’s world. Martin uses lines like “Flowers bloom from the cracks of sombre” to speak to the idea of music’s transformative powers. She muses on the grounding qualities of Brubeck & co., how they provide reprieve from her “Clenched jaw / Heavy breath / Vacant eyes.”

Sonically, Martin created the exact thing she is singing about, lyrically. Martin says the song is about “the power of music being a tool to change emotions,” and the healing powers we can benefit from, as long as we open ourselves to them. It adds a meta layer to the song in that it feels as though Martin is doing what Brubeck does for her, for her listeners, providing them with the musical setting in which to be entranced by.

The latter third of “Rhythm For The Blues” evolves into its own trance-like interlude that plays with more electronic-forward elements like the swirling, high-pitched synth runs that move through the backbeat. This section of the song feels like Martin’s personal rendition of classic jazz improv, making the track into a completely new version of itself. Martin builds tension with this moment, tension that then slowly melts as the synths fade out, leaving only the percussion to bask in its own echoes.