Moses Boyd Brings Faith And London's Soundsystem Culture Together On ‘Songs For Sinners’

Moses Boyd draws on gospel, jazz and London's soundsystem culture to explore faith and doubt on his forthcoming album ‘Songs For Sinners’.

Six years after Dark Matter, Moses Boyd is preparing to release an album rooted in the music that first surrounded him. On Songs For Sinners, the South London drummer, producer and composer brings gospel into conversation with jazz, electronic production and soundsystem culture, tracing the complicated relationship between belief and doubt.

The 12-track album arrives on 30 October through Exodus. Rather than treating faith as a fixed answer, Boyd explores how it can offer comfort while raising difficult questions. The approach reflects a career built on connecting different musical traditions, from his work in London's jazz scene to the rhythms and basslines that have shaped his production.

Boyd grew up in a Pentecostal household, where church music was part of everyday life. He began imagining a project that could connect gospel's emotional force with the freedom of jazz when he was sixteen. Years later, that idea has taken shape in a record featuring choir harmonies, Caribbean rhythms, live instrumentation and electronic textures.

The personal connection runs deeper than the music itself. Boyd wrote the lyrics across the album, and members of his family recorded vocals together at home as a 'kitchen choir', alongside contributions from professional gospel singers. Those details give Songs For Sinners a link to the community and upbringing behind its themes, rather than presenting spirituality as a purely abstract idea.

The three available previews introduce different sides of the record. ‘Say Yeah’ arrived before ‘Criticise’, which features Amber-Simone and examines judgement and hypocrisy in experiences of faith. They were followed by ‘More To Life’, featuring London alternative gospel singer SHANTÉH. Driven by drum and bass rhythms, the track was the first song Boyd fully composed for the album and marked his first attempt at writing lyrics, according to his account of its creation.

Songs For Sinners follows 2020's Mercury Prize-shortlisted Dark Matter and arrives ahead of a European and UK tour in spring 2027, including a London date at KOKO on 1 April. Where Boyd's earlier work showed how comfortably he could move across genres, this record places the experiences that shaped those musical instincts at the centre.