This latest studio album from the South Korean vocalist and songwriter (previously with ACT Music) finds her creatively reimagining a wide-ranging collection of songs made famous by female artists. From the hypnotic four-note ostinato played on kalimba which announces ‘Feeling Good’ to a tintinnabulating music box which provides the backdrop to ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’, the singer takes the listener on entirely new pathways through these songs.

Key to the album’s success is the inspired pairing with the wondrous US pianist, Jon Cowherd, who summons up supremely subtle and expressive accompaniment, whether performing on Fender Rhodes (‘My Funny Valentine’), a gorgeous-sounding piano (‘Baltimore Oriole’), or Wurlitzer (‘Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child’, in an arrangement which seems to nod to the delicate simplicity of Erik Satie’s 'Gymnopédies'). Taken from Björk’s album, Vespertine(2001), ‘Cocoon’ channels the incredible intimacy of the original but couches it in a more richly detailed harmonic language.

Elsewhere, a cover of Grace Jones’ reworking of the Astor Piazzolla classic, ‘I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)’, is prefaced by a piling up of vocal lines which become increasingly dissonant, before the introduction of its familiar tango-meets-reggae sound-world. Best of all is the duo’s remarkable take on Edith Piaf’s jaunty waltz-time ‘La Foule’, the newly cast groove of which transports the song to New Orleans.