The Detroit-raised drummer, percussionist and educator JoVia Armstrong self-released her debut album Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles back in 2009, prompting double takes with her leftfield explorations of black autonomy and what's been termed black nerd consciousness. Too in demand, perhaps, to hurry a follow-up – she's worked with luminaries from Aretha Franklin to Pat Metheny, house music don Theo Parrish to Malian kora star Ballaké Sissoko – Armstrong is also enrolled in a PhD at the University of California Irvine.

Her second solo album, the intriguing, prismatic, admirably experimental The Antidote Suite, turns out to be the soundtrack for the Black Index – a travelling exhibition of prints, drawings, performance and digital technology that champions black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. But while the album's five pieces were recorded as accompaniment to the visuals, there's nuance in the atmospherics, stories folded into the swirls and grooves of ‘Shades and Shapes’, into the lo-fi ‘Zebra’ with its vocals by Chicago great Yaw Agyeman, into ‘Meditations on Oyu (Mu)’, in which flute leads and violin lines sear through guitar arpeggios. Expansive, mostly instrumental, all of it intended for healing, The Antidote Suite takes in dub, reggae and rap and the space-is-the-place vibe of Sun Ra. Ancient-to-future music: embracing the collective, encouraging transformation.