Sampha’s evocative vocals betray the kind of battle scars life can inflict on an emotional soul. Clicking play on (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano, the lead single from his debut album, ‘Process’, is a revelatory experience.
Background noise instantly evaporates; a spotlight softly focuses on isolation and loss with fragile poignancy. Utilising the alternatively husky and high pitched tones of Sampha’s distinctive and brittle voice, the aesthetic of ’Process’ is beautifully intimate. It feels like a series of defining moments in processing healing and self preservation through crescendos of heartbreak and electronic melancholy.
We enter into Sampha’s peripheral vision as he invites us to see the world through his own eyes. Here is a man coming of age, tortured by his sensitivity but elated by the intensity of emotion that drives him.
Under is a perfect demonstration of his tumultuous inner world as a dream-like sequence finds the artist being dragged under, forced to endure love as it slips away.
Timmy’s Prayer is another standout, co-written with Kanye West. Lamenting the loss of a relationship which he rejected when he couldn’t recognise the importance of that love at the time, Sampha compares life without that lover now to a prison: “I'm waiting 'cause I fucked up, I got thrown out. I don't know which way to go now. Don't know which way is home now.”
Themes of bravery and repentance are prevalent throughout ‘Process’ and a complex emotional intelligence informs the writer’s reflection of self. Sampha reveals his hurt track to track, from those women he let slip away to the loss of his mother. Here is a man uninterested in ego, more the gift of self acceptance and love.
Kora Sings is a song for his mother, who died from cancer in 2015. “You've been with me since the cradle, you've been with me, you're my angel,” he sings. Sampha pleads for the inevitable to be reversed and his desperation is both tangible and gripping.
Sampha took a considerable amount of time to write, produce and release ‘Process’. The final product proves that perfection cannot be rushed. A brilliant writer and increasingly unique voice, he is a talent with conviction, originality and vision.
Sampha Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun March 26 2017 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute
Tue March 28 2017 - BRISTOL O2 Academy Bristol
Wed March 29 2017 - LONDON Roundhouse
Thu March 30 2017 - LONDON Roundhouse
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