Tag Archives: Momoko Gill

Momoko Gill announces debut solo album, Momoko; shares two singles, ‘No Others’ and When Palestine Is Free’

16 October 2025

Photo: Lex Blondin

Based in London and brought up in Japan and the US, Momoko Gill has firmly established herself as one of the most exciting talents in contemporary jazz and electronic music today. Earlier this year she released an album with Matthew Herbert and last year she teamed up with visual artist, filmmaker and poet Nadeem Din-Gabisi for a collaborative album as An Alien Called Harmony. A highly sought-after drummer and forward-thinking and brilliant composer, producer, songwriter, and vocalist, she has been collaborating and performing with a wide variety of incredible artists, including Alabaster DePlume, Coby Sey, Tirzah, Ruth Goller and Rozi Plain. Gill is finally stepping out from behind the curtain and releasing music under her own name for the first time. February 13th will see her release her debut solo album, simply titled Momoko, through Strut. A “deeply personal and poetic” album with an expansive stylistic range, it showcases her incredible songwriting skills and inimitable vision to full effect. As the press release describes, “throughout, you can hear the stylistic flavours of jazz musicians as much as singer-songwriters, experimental artists and electronic producers”. Recorded at Total Refreshment Centre, Momoko was self-produced and mixed by Matthew Herbert.

February feels like a long way but Gill is already enticing us with two sublime singles from Momoko,  the jazzier and radiant ‘No Others’ and When Palestine Is Free’, an utterly beautiful, moving and powerful track featuring a 50-person choir from London’s music scene that includes Shabaka Hutchings, Rozi Plain, Alabaster DePlume, Coby Sey, Forest Law, Ruth Goller, Danalogue, Seb Rochford, tyroneisaacstuart, Matthew Herbert and many, many more. “Why is it that we know, with more certainty than ever, that we are just one corner of a vast living, breathing mycelium network in a state of total emergency, battling powerful forces that seem to be driven by antagonism towards life itself?” Momoko comments. “Colonial violence, racism and oppression are everywhere, but it has never felt more urgent to renew our vows to fight it everywhere we see it.”

Gill will cast a spell on you so go and listen to both tracks below.


Herbert & Momoko tease upcoming album, Clay, with third single ‘Someone Like You’

13 June 2025

Released last week, ‘Someone Like You’ is the third stunning single lifted from Herbert & Momoko‘s upcoming first full-length album together, Clay, following ‘Babystar‘ and ‘Need To Run’. Speaking about the track, Momoko shares:

“As children we can enter a state of flow or contentment quite easily; Climbing a tree, playing a game, reading in the sun… there’s a self-contained wholeness to those times. We can’t find the love that’s beyond the pendulum swings of adolescent love without learning to let someone in, to become vulnerable, to let someone change you. It’s a choice to seek wholeness with another, and understanding interdependency, not just with people but with everything, is one of the most rewarding quests in life. In this song there is a yearning both to learn this interdependency as well as to remember the simpler contentment of being a child.”

Listen to ‘Someone Like You’ below.

Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gill announce debut collaborative album, Clay

09 April 2025

Photo: Manuel Vazquez

Artist, producer, composer and experimentalist Matthew Herbert and drummer, composer and vocalist Momoko Gill have crossed paths before, debuting a collaboration last year with the single ‘Fallen,’ followed by Gill’s remix of Herbert’s ‘The Horse Is Here.’ Now, they have announced the release of Clay, their first full-length album together, due out on June 27th through Strut. Clay plays with sound in ways that only Herbert and Gill can. Featuring eleven tracks, the upcoming record “treads nimbly between the dancefloor and the more introspective moods of the early hours”, as the press release explains, capturing the kind of balance that makes their collaboration so intriguing. Herbert’s signature style, often transforming the world into his instrument, collides beautifully with Gill’s unique voice and multi-instrumental prowess.

Heralding the release of Clay, Herbert and Gill have shared the lead single ‘Babystar’, a gorgeous track woven with intricate rhythms. Listen to it below.