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Sampha made himself known in the 2010s with appearances on songs by Drake, Beyoncé, Kanye West and Frank Ocean. These are among the biggest names, but the Londoner took a while to translate the exposure into a solo breakthrough. That finally came with his debut album Process, a thoughtful and emotive piece of work that won the Mercury Prize in 2017. The wait had been worth it.
Its follow-up now arrives after another long gap. Like Process, it marks the onset of a significant change in the singer-songwriter’s personal life. His debut came out in the aftermath of his mother’s death from cancer. In contrast, Lahai is shaped by his experience of becoming a father in 2020.
Family continuity is the message of its title, which is the name of Sampha Sisay’s grandfather and also his own middle name. The album has an eclectic range of collaborators, including US singer Yaeji, Black Midi’s drummer Morgan Simpson and Yussef Dayes, a fulcrum of London’s jazz scene. Barcelona’s El Guincho, who worked on Rosalía’s latest album, is a co-producer.
The trippily named “Stereo Colour Cloud (Shaman’s Dream)” launches us into the slipstream of fast minimalist keyboards, like sand running through an hourglass, which is joined by the pell-mell tumble of a rapid drumbeat. Meanwhile a slower, warmer bassline opens up a space for Sampha’s voice. He sings about “subjects mysterious like time and love” in a calm but wondering tone. Other voices cut in, like unbidden thoughts. “Time flies, life issues,” they intone.
This deftly worked sense of different temporalities taking place simultaneously recurs throughout the songs. “Time don’t make sense no more,” Sampha sings in “Suspended” in a quavering, agitated fashion, no longer calm-sounding. But the song’s opposing use of expansive melodies and thrumming rhythms makes perfect sense. “What If You Hypnotise Me?” underlines the point, with Sampha singing in a high voice about a desire to “fly away for a minute” amid a pressing bustle of keyboards and drums.
“Through the eyes of my child I can see an innervision,” he semi-raps in “Satellite Business”. The glance at Stevie Wonder’s 1973 album Innervisions is telling. As a child Sampha used to fall asleep listening to Wonder. Lahai’s sophisticated psychedelia resembles the ensuing dream.
★★★★★
‘Lahai’ is released by Young
