Categories
ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Sampha’s “Process”

Over the last half-decade, through collaborations with Jessie Ware, Solange, Frank Ocean, SBTRKT, Drake and others, Sampha Sisay has probably contributed as much to the state of contemporary left-field R&B as anyone without an album out. So it makes sense that Process, which culminates the triple-threat Londoner’s gifts as a singer, songwriter and producer, feels familiar; it’s right in line with the elegantly emotive British school of Ware, Jamie Woon and (particularly) James Blake. Which isn’t to say that Sisay doesn’t distinguish himself beautifully. His voice, predictably, shines throughout—soft, poignant, by turns angelic and careworn. More surprising is his varied, inventive production work—tense, off-kilter drum loops propelling the haunted fever dream “Blood On Me”; warped sample-skitters on “Reverse Faults”; digital harps and synth pads on the lush, beatless closer. And his songwriting is equally flexible and strong, the ballads especially: “Timmy’s Prayer,” building from a loping Chi-Lites riff and some decidedly Blake-ian “whoo!”s to a driving, polyrhythmic peak, is the album’s emotional centerpiece, while the aptly unadorned “(No One Knows Me) Like The Piano,” its most intimate moment, has the hallmarks of a modern standard.

—K. Ross Hoffman