Sampha’s New Album Will Destroy You
Sampha’s earliest public recordings are largely instrumental. Sundanza, a 2010 six-track EP of bright beats, is remarkable for what it mostly lacks: that voice. When Sampha does sing on “Rainstars” and “Shades,” he sounds boyish, even slick. The raw texture of his vocals began to emerge on the piano ballad “Indecision,” which he wrote and recorded after Amy Winehouse died in 2011. It eventually wound up on his 2013 critically acclaimed breakthrough EP, Dual.
Some of the songs on Process date back to that year, when Sampha moved into a place of his own in East London. At the time, his mother’s cancer was in remission, and his duty as a caregiver to her had seemingly concluded. However, less than a year later, her cancer had returned, and this time the diagnosis was terminal. He moved back to her home in South London’s Morden neighborhood to be with her until she passed. Sampha’s mother haunts Process, a ghost making the curtains in the many-chambered house of this album tremble.
Binty and her husband, who died from cancer a decade before her, were immigrants from Sierra Leone. These roots figure prominently into Sampha’s relationship with his family, his sense of spirituality, and, by extension, his music. “No one is ever alone in Sierra Leone,” he says. “There’s always family or other people around to be there for the elderly or the sick. The UK mentality is having a job, earning an income, and these other ambitions. The spiritual side of yourself might go a bit out of whack.”
That gnawing feeling that something is unbalanced informs a number of the songs on Process. On “What Shouldn’t I Be?,” he sounds beyond broken, singing, “I should visit my brother/But I haven’t been there in months.”
“A couple years before my mum was diagnosed with cancer, my brother had a serious stroke that left him physically disabled,” he explains. “I cared for him a lot when I was younger, and around the time of making this album. [But] living in East London, there was a period of not visiting [him]. Once something’s out of your physical proximity, it’s really difficult to feel things and emotionally connect. When you’re really into what you’re doing, it’s easy to let things drift away. And things get further and further and further….” He trails off.
Sampha likens the grip of guilt to sleep paralysis—the terror many experience in the liminal zone between wakefulness and sleep, when you’re semiconscious and it feels like bodily movement is impossible. It’s often accompanied by hallucinations of intruders sneaking into the bedroom to prey on the helpless dreamer. “I have experienced it once or twice,” Sampha says. “Your mind wakes up before your body and you have to find the energy to jolt yourself awake. You become paralyzed by this imaginary wall of guilt you’ve built. Sometimes you just need to push yourself, and once you’re there, it’s fine.”
