Progressive RockBlues
LJK Records · 15 June 2026
“Synthetic”, the track that opens the album and gives it its name, takes its time: five and a half minutes that begin with a smoky, dragged-out vocal and thicken into a chorus several sizes bigger than the place it came from. Leoni Jane Kennedy plays in riffs and arpeggios, and the guitar carries the songs from underneath without often stepping out in front.
She had been playing these seven pieces live for years before recording them. The Hammond organ on “Sloe”, five oh three, and the tempo changes around it are where you can most hear that the arrangements come off a stage; “Test The Water”, five oh four, is the most direct thing here, and “Temple”, four fifty-eight, closes with strings moving a long way back. Nick Andrew plays synth and MIDI guitar and also serves as assistant producer and recording engineer; Will Plunkett is on bass and James Jackman on drums. Eliot Kennedy produced, mixed and mastered.
On “Jesse”, four forty-six, the guitar finally sings on its own. It is the only track where the instrument that got her here steps out in front: the rest of the record it spends laying the foundations.
At eighteen, Brian May and Roger Taylor awarded her at eighteen, Brian May and Roger Taylor awarded her the Freddie Mercury Scholarship “for her unique and beautiful artistry that both Roger and Brian felt was a perfect fit for Freddie’s memory”, and PRS lists her among its official artists.
Across thirty-four minutes, “Synthetic” moves from blues to indie, from folk to a touch of jazz and back, and what stitches the seven songs together is her voice, versatile enough to carry all of it; the writing doesn’t get there. The record shows the repertoire of a performer before that of a writer.
It came out on 15 June on her own label, LJK Records, three years after “New World Woman”, the album of acoustic Rush covers she funded by crowdfunding.
Rating: 7.0/10
Text by Guillem Cardós