★★★★★
Six years on from his Mercury-prize successful debut masterpiece Process, Sampha is again with one more murals. His sophomore album, Lahai, stands tall as its personal hand-built universe, full of imagery of clocks, birds and spaceships, as Sampha seeks out the that means of life.
The South London born and raised singer has snowballed within the music world over the previous decade, gaining recognition from his personal immaculate discography, alongside an array of collaborations with the likes of Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Drake and SBTRKT.
His music usually delves into the uncooked feelings of affection and loss. Lahai approaches these with an trustworthy voice on what it means to be human, as declared on ‘Only’, the place the singer firmly units his intention to “take a mic, press record and speak the truth only”.
The album’s opener ‘Stereo Colour Cloud (Shaman’s Dream)’ testifies to this. The music unfolds with celestial, twinkling piano keys and hitting beats, beneath lyrics which navigate via the depths of area and time. The refrain brings these endeavours again to earth, posing the principal questions of “Who do you care about? Who’s there when you’re down?”.
These questions are answered within the following observe ‘Spirit 2.0’, which gives its listener a sonic hug of reassurance. The atmospheric, pulsing instrumentals create the phantasm of falling, as Sampha sings, with assured confidence that gentle, love, religion, pals and naturally, spirit, are all the time there to catch us once we fall.
On ‘Spirit 2.0’ in his efforts to “catch the clouds”, Sampha cites ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, Richard Bach’s 1970 fable a few seagull who’s making an attempt to study flying, reflection, freedom and self-discovery. The album’s sixth observe ‘Jonathan L Seagull’ goes in even deeper to this reference, because the music accepts the variations between himself and a liked one “even though we’ve been through the same, doesn’t always mean we feel the same”. As the music thrives with Sampha’s hovering falsetto, alongside building, jazzy bass guitars, it easily retracts as soon as once more, closing off with a child-like, choral recitation of “How high can a bird ever fly?”.
The fowl’s-eye view frames a lot of Lahai. On ‘Dancing Circles’, Sampha reminisces on the pasts and presents of a relationship: “We were two, birds flying away from each other, looking for each other” is repeated with the ultimate half altered to “looking to recover” over panicked piano chords and an artificial refrain that yearns to return to closeness once more via “dancing”. ‘Suspended’ serves as a component two, carrying the identical anxiousness because the earlier observe while reminiscing on the recollections of a once-was wholesome and blissful relationship.
Through the poetic imagery of the mission, Lahai serves as a remedy session, each drowning within the depth of the feelings it explores, while concurrently drying itself off.
‘Inclination Compass’ takes the Try a Little Tenderness method to the current sourness in his relationship, as Sampha pleads “let’s fly towards the source again, let’s switch from cold to warm again” over minimal, subdued instrumentals to permit himself to be heard. ‘What If You Hypnotise Me’ imagines a world the place another person could make the anxieties and the “what ifs” in his mind shut off and “fly away for a minute”. As Sampha attracts aways, Léa Sen gorgeously sings the observe to its shut, over ECG monitor-like murmurs.
Sampha’s debut album Process noticed the singer take care of grief, after the lack of his mom.
Lahai reaches a state of each acknowledgment and acceptance within the passing of time. Sampha credit the presence of his first little one, born in 2020, for this therapeutic, on ‘Satellite Business’, “Through the eyes of my child, I can see an inner-vision”, and on ‘Can’t Go Back’, “Lord knows my daughter here, she’s heaven sent”.
With the album’s identify Lahai being each Sampha’s center identify and his paternal grandfathers first identify, family tree is evidently on the core of Sampha’s grounding. The mission’s closing observe ‘Rose Tint’, evokes this lovely sentiment, with a utopian household reunion, gathering everybody collectively for a household picture – “Everybody gather round, gonna take this picture now… Everybody in one house”.
In 14 bursting tracks, Lahai cohesively scopes each emotion that goes into the messiness of human existence. Sampha communicates his awe for all times, accepting the shadows forged via anxiousness and grief, however relentlessly shifting ahead via nature, time and area to succeed in, as he phrases it, “beyond-ness”.
