Although we know that things in the palace move slowly, some of us feared with disbelieving concern that the six years of silence in which Sampha had not published anything could have meant that his best ideas had already been previously captured in “Process”their celebrated and impeccable debut from 2017. How daring was ours to not trust that this reasonable time had meant nothing more than the ideal breeding ground for a project more solid than the previous one and as capable of convincing us as a five years ago
Without losing intensity, Sampha He doses his gifts as he wants and likes, displaying the mannerist skills of a craftsman and the fantastic ingenuity of a storyteller, knowing that haste will never be his traveling companion. He shows it to us with each beat and each verse, through that sincere affection with which the pieces of his are treated and produced. “Lay” (Young, 23), the second album in his particular discography and a heartfelt diatribe that reflects on the passage of time, inspired by the works of Kodwo Eshun and Richard Bach, and the studies of the British psychiatrist Brian Cox.
While “Process” It functioned as a still photo of a very specific and personal moment in Sampha’s life (serving its clues as an oxygen tank during the grief that came with facing the loss of her mother), “Lay” It does not stop feeling familiar and private (in fact, the title itself refers to the name of his grandfather and connects with certain reflections on his sudden fatherhood), but its conception takes us to a more dynamic and shared plane, where we no longer talk so much about a work conceived by and for its executor, but in a project carried out by several hands where the communal and collective sense prevails. This is reflected by the diverse number of minds that have wanted to add their part to the whole, with a brilliant production signed by Pablo Díaz-Reixa, aka El Guincho, as well as other distinguished players (from Yaeji to Yussef Dayes, including Owen Pallett, Sheila Maurice Gray (Kokoroko), Ibeyi, Morgan Simpson (Black Midi), Laura Groves, and a long etcetera).
With a pertinent joke heard during the first bars of “Stereo Colour Cloud (Shaman’s Dream)”, Sampha awakens from his extensive lethargy in order to once again put his music at the service of his most intimate humanistic questions, located between the earthly and the dreamlike and destined to deeply influence that appreciation of temporal evolution that only age grants (“I wish you, could, time / Time, missile, back, forward, I miss you, time, misuse / Time flies, life issues”). A brief interlude of just 20 seconds, in fact, will accentuate this particular obsession a few tracks later (“Time does not exist, a time machine”we hear in “Time Piece”), but until then we will witness the Londoner in a state of grace, giving us what are perhaps the best pieces of his individual record so far: a dreamy selection of soul, rap, jazz, dance and jungle that excites as well as hooks up (“Spirit 2.0”), moves without missing a beat (“Dancing Circles”), puts your best resources to the test (“Suspended”), successfully takes us off the most predictable road (“Jonathan L. Seagull”), or it directly makes our hair stand on end from the first verse (“Only”).
Without the need to become cumbersome in his speech or stale in his forms, “Lay” transmits maturation in all its spaces, renewing our votes for one of the most prominent faces of electronic indie at the beginning of the last decade and one of the recurring wild cards in the production and composition of songs for major artists. Sampha can take as much time as he wants between albums, since his talent and quality are already an unquestionable guarantee that any wait will always be up to par.