Album in Focus: Heaven is Closer Than You Know By Chioniso.



What have you heard about spoken word artists? I bet it's all lies. If anyone has understood the power words hold then it's a spoken word artist. Chioniso is one such gifted talent. She is a poet, singer, songwriter and spoken word artist from the city of Bulawayo. She is a creative who makes impactful art and that comes out in the pieces she posts.


Heaven is Closer Than You Know is her first ever project and it's a brave one. It's an 8 track EP filled with soulful RnB and of course spoken word.


Tracklist:

  1. Cry For You
  2. You & I ft Prolific
  3. Traffic Lights
  4. Morning After ft Drummerboy Kenny
  5. Girls In The Club
  6. 47 Jacarandas 
  7. In The Miz
  8. Ghost ft Indigo Saint


The opening track on the project Cry For You is a soulful and emotionally heavy song. Chioniso sings, "Don't make me cry for you, ndaneta nekuchema". It's not filled with a lot of wordplay but everything is in how Chioniso sings. The chords she strikes tell a deep story than words ever could and the song is topped off by a spoken word performance at the end.


You and I ft Prolific features the same balance of a mellow instrumental coupled with the soulful vocals of Chioniso. It's a love song that speaks on that typical promise of forever and everything that comes in the way of that promise. Prolific delivers a lyrically rich verse that fits in perfectly to the flow of the track. Again as the track winds down, Chioniso delves into some spoken word.


Traffic Lights is filled with a different energetic compared to the way the two opening tracks start out. It's a track rich in metaphors and she's uses the analogy of meeting traffic lights on the road of time. It features themes of patience and how we have to understand that we are going to arrive at certain achievements in our lives at different times. 


Morning After ft Drummerboy Kenny is a smooth sound but it carries sadness with it. It speaks amount the morning after love making and it rightly captures the mood when passions have died. Chioniso speaks on being unable to give her lover what he wants and there's pain in being unable to make someone stay.


Girls In The Club has the feel of a club song and it comes out in the dynamic of the instrumental and how Chioniso changes up her lyrical delivery. She dives into her soulful at times and then draws back to a sort off lazy flow over the beat. It's a really good song in its own right and it's that tune to be played on loud speakers.


47 Jacarandas is the song for the dreamers and my favourite tune on the album. Half smoked cigarettes and 47 dreams, that combination just stuck with me. I don't what the relevance of the number 47 is but the track had me wondering how many dreams I had had in life my life. It's softly sang as Chioniso takes you on this journey of reminiscing and thinking about the future at the same time.


Poetry is the art of making organic love, the art of loving organically without excess chemicals like jealousy, without genetically modifying our appearances..." It's such a heartfelt performance that took me deep in thought and not just about love but everything about the way I live. Chioniso displays her multilingual abilities with a sprinkling of French poetry.


In The Miz comes through with great vibes and it's a joint for the fun it. It's playful from the onset and in terms of musical exploration it's the bravest track on this album. The rapper side of Chioniso is brought out in her wordplay and lyrical ingenuity. She drops lines like, "I put the sad in sadza because all we have is disaster..." and I was left chuckling a little but still impressed with her thought process to come up with that.


Ghost ft Indigo Saint still has a bit of up tempo energy but Chioniso is back to her soulful self. Indigo Saint excels on this and his verse caps off beautiful vocals on the chorus. It brings a deserved ending to the EP but I still feel like we needed more. Heaven is Closer Than You Know is exactly what I expected from a poet and spoken word artist delving into music. In fact it's all that more. The combination of serenading vocals and poetry is perfect recipe. I can't wait to see what Chioniso has in her future.


Greedysouth rating: 6.5/10


Checkout the album HERE

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