Reviewed by Matthew Cordle

Joshua Tosh's website homepage overviews his ministry: "My passionate desire is to see people experience an abiding presence of God in their lives, and I believe one of the avenues to have this awesome encounter is through praise and worship." Joshua is a London-based Nigerian worship leader who learned to play a number of instruments while growing up in a family of songwriters/singers. Stylistically he combines traditional African musical elements with modern worship styles to produce something that could perhaps be best categorised as world gospel. This album was originally released and reviewed by Cross Rhythms in 2007 and I can find no reference as to why/how it's been remastered, so it's hard to comment on the effectiveness of that process. However, commenting with a 2016 ear, I have to say that much of both music and lyrics are somewhat formulaic. All eight songs focus on praise of God, mostly in the mid-tempo space except for the Calypso-styled marathon tracks of "Higher Praise" and "Unrestricted Praise", at 10 and 19 minutes respectively.19 is too long and left me reaching for the skip button! "More Than" is a smooth, jazzy-feel ballad more than a little reminiscent of Will Downing's mellowness. "Testimony" had my toes tapping, recounting the testimony of the woman Jesus healed who had been bleeding for 12 years and weaving in the chorus of Noel Richards' classic, "You Laid Aside Your Majesty", until I noticed the chorus, "What did Jesus do for me?/He brought sugar for my tea/He brought butter for my bread"! Yuck, in my opinion reducing what Jesus has done for us to the level of a sugar lump is just too twee. Joshua's musicality is unquestionable and the playing, singing and vocal arrangements are excellent. All-in-all, if there was a desire to update these songs to make them more accessible to today's audience, I feel more could have been done. For example, why not update the naff-sounding synth brass and strings, which are pretty wince-inducing.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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