Sampha

British producer and songwriter Sampha Sisay, the child of Sierra Leonean immigrants, the James Blake-ian background falsetto vocal in Solange's Don't Touch My Hair, in Kanye West's Saint Pablo, in Frank Ocean's Alabama and in Drake's Too Much, debuted with the EPs Sundanza (2010) and Dual (2013). The former opens with the thinly-chopped beat and the undulating drone of Kij. but even the deconstructed pop ballad Rainstars and the propulsive techno jam Shades show original elegant takes on the stereotypes. The latter boasts another surreal beat, Without, bot now the emphasis is on the singing, whether the oneiric litanies of Beneath The Tree and Can't Get Close or piano-based pop a` la Elton John Indecision.

His first album, Process (Young Turks, 2017), revealed an introverted songwriter (the elaborate trancey elegy Plastic 100-degree Celsius, the intimate subdued piano-based Joni Mitchell-esque No One Knows Me Like The Piano the tormented Under) with a knack for rhythmic unorthodoxy (the creative syncopated folk-hop arrangement of album standout Kora Sings, the propulsive funk-soul of Blood on me). Occasionally, the part transcends the whole, like in the whispered ghostly hypnosis of What Shouldn’t I Be? His singing is the weakest element.

After a six year hiatus Sampha Sisay returned with Lahai (2023), mostly co-produced with Pablo "El Guincho" Diaz-Reixa, another cycle of fragile and ethereal songs built on unstable foundations. Some are basically sonatas for romantic piano and intricate beats, notably Can't Go Back and Stereo Colour Cloud (Shaman's Dream) (with ultra-syncopated glitchy beats), in which the vocals are a minor diversion. Others escalate the degree of anomaly: the delicate weak skeletal Spirit 2.0 over a subdued pulsating/boiling beat that grows into a swirling dance, the convoluted beat and gymnastic vocal arrangements of What If You Hypnotise Me?, and the surreal peak of Suspended, which blends multi-tracked vocals and a repetitive piano pattern. The piano itself is used for another outstanding rhythmic invention in Dancing Circles. Too bad that this grand experimentation is designed for simple neosoul ballads.