There is no such thing as a shoo-in for the Mercury prize, an award whose breadth of reference is admirably erratic. But you can’t help but feel that the debut album by Sampha Sisay, Process, might be the record to beat this year.
Distinctly British, sonically restless and emotionally action-packed, Process starts with a bleep and a squawk, and ends with Sampha beating himself up for not visiting his brother. “It’s not all about me,” he mutters mournfully on What Shouldn’t I Be?. He beats himself up fairly regularly. On Timmy’s Prayer it’s a lost love. “I’m on the floor trying to dress my wounds/ Address the fact it was mine to lose…”
You could call Process a neo-soul record, if it were more straightforwardly American; a neo-neo soul record might better describe this set of slippery, analogue-digital songs that takes in unusual grooves, Sampha’s Sierra Leonean heritage (Kora Sings) and a sample that recreates the US moon landing (Plastic 100C). Love songs abound in soul, but nothing out there quite sounds like Incomplete Kisses, in which Sampha’s warm vocal – and some closing piano notes – are the only conventional elements. Woozy, off-kilter melodies flit around his voice, while percussive elements trickle in and out, fizzing and plinking.
Fans with long-ish memories will place Sampha as the voice of SBTRKT’s club tunes from 2011. Since then, the south London producer and singer has had guest spots on big records by Drake and Kanye West, and a significant presence on Solange Knowles’s recent album, A Seat at the Table (that’s him, duetting and dancing in the video for Don’t Touch My Hair). Sampha may come with the endorsement of pop’s US A-list, but this is no party record. Its most club-seeking track, Blood on Me, is a nightmare scenario in which hooded pursuers “smell the blood on me”.
Male vulnerability has been a growth industry in pop this century, but no one does power-in-hurt quite like Sampha, whose aching croon is never wishy-washy. On Under, one of the more ticklish, tricksy beats here, it finally roars. “I’m gasping for air!” Sampha bellows, sounding, ironically, like he has all the oxygen he needs.
Elsewhere, Sampha mourns his mother, who died in 2015 after enduring cancer. (No One Knows Me) Like the Piano is the album’s big ballad, depicting the introverted, youngest child of five who became himself through the instrument. If Sampha’s process sounds like one big downer, it isn’t. Every listen throws up some new, previously unnoticed innovation.
