Feature

Isaac Odeniran (Zoe Records): God's Plan

Having been founded back in 1999 by British-born, Nigerian-rooted Isaac Odeniran as an imprint of his Abundant Life Recording And Entertainment Company Limited, over the past 23-years East London-based Zoe Records has earned itself a prestigious reputation as “the premier British Black Gospel Music label” via an impressive catalogue of releases that range from such top-drawer US artists as 12-times Grammy Award-winning Shirley Caesar, renowned “father of modern gospel music” Andrae Crouch, and one-time R&B star Coko (formerly of international-chart-topping female trio SWV) to such British trailblazers as Dove Award nominee Jay Ess and enduring UK Gospel songstress Dawn Thomas Wallace. While other notable ventures of the company include films, music publishing and promotion, and numerous community projects.
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Cue the aforementioned and ever-affable Mr Odeniran reacquainting himself with “Blues & Soul” Assistant Editor Pete Lewis, two years on from his previous “B&S” interview, to mainly discuss his above-mentioned company’s ongoing activities while simultaneously highlighting the label’s current three primary album releases.

Let’s start by briefly discussing what’s generally been happening on the Zoe Records front since we last spoke in 2020 near the start of the first lockdown…

“Before the lockdown started we had a large amount of work in progress, and so because during the lockdown engineers couldn’t go anywhere and artists couldn’t go on tour, basically what we did was spend much of the last two years getting our engineers to finalise the masters for all that work in progress… And the three albums we’ll be talking about today are very much a result of all that”.
Words PETE LEWIS