Sampha

Photography by Liam Macrae
Published in Kaleidoscope

The long awaited second album from Sampha, Lahai, released this fall to universal acclaim. Named after the artist’s middle name—a tribute to his grandfather—the record is an exploration of loss and healing, reflecting on the passing of his parents, the birth of his daughter, and the inevitably cyclical nature of life and memory.

So I guess maybe a good place to begin would be at the start of making your new album, Lahai. What were the earliest inspirations for the record, and when did it start to actually become an album, rather than just some songs you were working on?  
Someone coined it as "buying inspiration.” Basically, I bought some new gear.

Some new toys to play with.
Yeah. So I bought a synth, called OB-6, and a couple of synth modules, and it all started with that and figuring out this new synth and how it worked. The first track I wrote on it was “Spirit 2.0,” which just started with some chords, some modular melodies. And I’d walk around coming up with melodies in my head, writing them down, and the album started to grow. This was late summer 2019. By October and November of that year, I’d really gotten into the swing of it. And then, in 2020, I planned to go to LA, in April. I had a kid on the way, so I was really inspired to write as fast as possible. But then, that didn’t happen. Obviously, the pandemic hit in March and just totally put everything on hold.

Is that usually how you compose? Starting with stuff in your head, just playing around? Or do you have an idea to make a song about a certain idea or feeling?
I initially started making music really as a producer: I would just make beats, so sound is generally where I start from. I've never been someone who writes down things like “songs.” Instead, a song will form just from me either playing the piano or starting to make something instrumental, which I think shows in my songwriting as well—it’s quite abstract. I draw from a lot of things. I don’t write down lyrics; I wouldn’t consider myself a writer. Although, I do think a lot about lyrics. 

It’s a more explorative form of songwriting, seeing where you go, rather than having a destination you want to get to.
Yeah, the way I've mainly made music up until this point has been through intuition. But I’ll have a sonic aesthetic I want to create, and it’s about building a mood towards a picture I have in my mind. I often record with photography and fashion books everywhere, films playing on mute in the background, as a way get some inspiration. So the sonic palette is the thread that connects everything, and I'll write to that sonic palette. That will then dictate the direction of the lyrics, which I'm usually kind of freestyling, seeing what comes out.

Compared to the first album, was it a very different process? Did you feel more experienced?
I think, just like anything, any new endeavor, it always feels like a new start. But I’m more confident now, especially in not having to seek out validation from other people, which is something I did feel I needed to do more in the past. But I’m also more confident in knowing what the finish point of a song is and more confident in knowing if I need help with a certain song. Should I show it to someone? Should I incubate it for myself? But it's funny, even now, before going into making any new music, I'm always like, "I have no idea what I’m doing."

There's nothing more daunting than the blank sheet of paper.
Yeah, most definitely.

The first album obviously had a huge impact, both culturally and on your career: you won the Mercury Prize, it was a really lauded record, really well loved. Was it daunting to follow it up? How do you feel now about that first album? Do you listen to it still? Do you reflect on it?
I haven't listened to it in a while. But there are songs from Process that will be with me for life. And there's also songs which feel a little bit more distant. But I feel like making that record and making this one came from a similar place. I mean, all music is a document. Both records feel like a bit of a photograph of where I was at at the time I was making them.

I mean, both records circle around these very big themes: they're about life, faith, time, death, healing. They're interrelated in what they're concerned with.
For whatever reason, music seems to be the space where I express those things. But it’s like I've stepped into a different mode of being slightly on this record, tapping into certain energies, recognizing my own self more. On Process, I was less reflective on my intuition and the things I was preoccupied with. And now, on this record, I'm more aware of those things. I'm also maybe a little bit more confident and also humbled by recognizing that I do hit ceilings and I need... All the answers aren't necessarily in the music.

But also I'm more confident with being an amateur philosopher, an amateur anything, you know what I mean? With not necessarily feeling like I need to be an expert to have a point of opinion or express myself, whether it's talking on science, or time, or on all these things where I could easily be seen as pretentious—and trying not to see pretentiousness as something with negative connotations. I'm one of those people who might read ten pages of a book and start talking about it, and I’m embracing that when it comes to music. Process had a similar sort of energy, but part of the reason I called it Process was because sometimes you need to externalize things to be able to create a dialogue which can help you move along. I feel that this is an extension of that to a certain degree.

But then calling the new album Lahai, which is your middle name and your granddad's name, and compared to a more abstract title like Process, this is much more personal—even without getting into the music—as a statement of what the record is about.
It’s a more personal title, but there is still definitely an element of zoomed-out-ness. Although, I did want it to feel more detailed, more forthright, less abstract. More direct too, maybe.

On the record itself, the first track, Stereo Color Cloud, the opening lyrics sum all that up quite neatly: “Time flies, life issues time, back, forward.” This words become a refrain throughout the whole record, almost. This really sets out what I think this record is really about, which is time, to a certain extent, but really people through time, the movement of time, and the effect of time on people.
Life issues time, yeah: it’s about this biocentric view of time, and time as a byproduct of life. I was watching an episode of this BBC series, Wonders of the Universe, which Brian Cox was presenting. The episode was called “Entropy and the Arrow of Time.” And then I was reading The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. I was reading a lot about Afrofuturism and I was reading a lot of West African philosophy and was really interested in how important time is to them, how looking back is imperative, is so important in terms of being able to move forward.

The references to time in the lyrics are really exploring this movement of time both forwards backwards: for example, Lahai is your name; it's also your granddad's name. And there’s cyclical references to your mother and daughter. It’s time as a nonlinear process, as memory, and finding new perspectives on experience for the future.
Yeah, definitely. I feel like, in this record, part of my thing was me not necessarily having a conscious connection with the metaphysical, especially with people that have passed and I was thinking a lot about consciousness, and how maybe it just disappears—how maybe when you die that's it. But then there was also this feeling I had of my mother through my daughter. My mother is someone who I learned from, and now I'm like, my daughter's teaching me so much, but she also reminds me of my mother. And so that's looking forward, but it's also looking, I guess, behind me at the same time; it’s about recognizing the connection. You're looking with hindsight. Sometimes I'm looking at memory, but the memory's moving forward, sort of thing.

This is also reflected in the music. I’ve been listening to the record a lot on repeat, and the album is very cyclical; if you’ve got it queued up to play again from the beginning when it ends, it kind of loses a sense of beginning and ending. Musical and lyrical reoccur throughout.
Yeah, I wanted to make something almost without conclusion, something open-ended. It’s a journey—like life.

The words become quite mantra-like at points, where, by repeating them, you're trying to understand something, and, through the repetition, it reaches an understanding.
The melody comes first, but it’s all about trying to articulate a feeling. I like when you look at a piece of art and the feeling hits you before the words to describe what you’re feeling do. And then the thought starts to codify itself. And that’s kind of how the lyrics come together. Sometimes I'll envision an image and I'm basically just trying to articulate it, and I think that's what songs do anyway: a lot of great songs articulate feelings that you have but you haven't really been able to pin down. A song can help you feel something: it’s empathetic.  



There’s a lot of lyrical motifs that resurface throughout the record: some songs pose questions that are answered a few songs later. Ideas develop throughout the album.
I wanted to it to feel like it's the same person who's thinking throughout the album, that it’s all part of the same train of thought.

I know you didn’t have a lot of training at playing the piano, but did you ever have singing lessons? 
I did have piano lessons in secondary school, just not many. And I gave up on singing lessons: again, a few, not many.

I ask, because your voice is such an integral part of what you do. I wonder how you found out you had this voice that carries so much emotion in it. 
I guess it’s an expression that comes from a real feeling a lot of the time; singing is extremely cathartic for me.



Have you always found singing and playing the piano to be quite cathartic? 
Especially when I do it just for myself. It was never something I imagined doing in front of crowds of people. It was just about me and the piano, my voice. And it was very different when I was producing and still now when I’m producing for other people. I had to get pushed, a bit, by others into sharing that part of myself. Other producers would encourage me, help me finish things: I’d be humming something and they’d get me to lay it down.

Once you’d been pushed a bit, did it feel natural? Did you ever think that you would be a “singer"?
I never thought it would be the main thing. I don’t think I saw the vision in myself that other people saw. 

I think that's quite a normal thing, right?
And it's also, depending on who you are, quite abstract as well, the idea of listening to your own voice. Why would you want to listen to that?

Is it a very different way of working when you are producing for other people?
Yeah, I mean, obviously there's the recognition of someone else's opinion, and I'm more sensitive and aware of how someone else is feeling and then also trying to balance that with being true to myself, trying to make things that I like. But producing for other people is a whole whole other game in terms of recognizing what's important. And there's times where it's like: "Oh, we might not need to make a track today. We just need to talk to each other, and I need to try and get to the bottom of who you are or know who you are as a human being, what your intentions are and understand your perspective."

And there's other times as where it's like, I can recognise that this person just wants me to be me and just take over and take lead. And they're cool with that. Or instead they really want to express themselves and all I need to do it give them space to do that, create an environment that makes that possible. So yeah, it’s a different process, but it’s the same as its always about learning.

And there's also quite a variety of collaborative voices on the album as well—it’s quite polyglot: there’s Korean, French, other singers; voices get built up throughout the album.
And a lot of these things kind of happened naturally. Like Yaeji, who sings the Korean part you just mentioned, I didn't ask for it; she just did it. But what's interesting is that making certain songs, in my head, geographically, I was in a lot of different places. Like “Spirit 2.0”—in one minute, I'm in a Japanese moss garden; the next minute, I'm somewhere in West Africa; the next minute, I'm in a club in London, or I'm in the Amazonian rainforest. I want the record to kind of take me around the globe. And, a lot of the time, it’s just me gravitating, quite naturally, towards these things. Like, I’ll take West African folk music and then add polyrhythms and syncopation on top of that, which then finds into way into something funky, or it becomes hypnotic, a bit like Steve Reich, which also leads back to West African music. So there's this idea of repetition and variation and simplification and groove, whether it's in melodies or the percussion. It's a very percussive record.

This really came out in the live performance too. There’s moments where the piano becomes almost part of the rhythm section.
Yeah, definitely on “Dancing Circles,” especially: I wanted it to feel really metronomic.

And you said “Spirit 2.0” was the first song you finished, or first song you realized was going to be for the album. And what was it about that specific song that song that unlocked something; when did you realize it was the beginning? 
It's difficult for me to articulate exactly, but it felt like it expressed a time in my life or something I’d been feeling. And something in the mood and sound of the chords was very reflective of myself, how I was feeling, a sense of hybridity within myself—something spiritual, for want of a better word. 

One other theme that runs throughout the record is Jonathan Seagull and this fable—which is kind of about self-expression and freedom—and there's references to flight, the sky, freedom, feathers.
I was thinking about time and I was thinking about memory a lot and how they are both very abstract and both related. Without memory, time doesn’t exist, right? Because, if I couldn't remember the last five seconds, what is it anyway? 

But a lot of this was spurred on by thinking back about my brother reading me bedtime stories, and specifically this book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. For whatever reason, when I was just freestyling some lyrics, it came up. I was imagining myself falling from the sky.

I was going through a period of my life where I felt like I needed that bird’s eye view. And, with that bird’s eye view, I wanted to see the similarities between all of us, or, like, I wanted to imagine now if we could fast-forward 30 years in time and look back. When you look back, it’s easier to have some perspective. At that point in time, I felt like I didn’t know why I was here and I didn’t have any idea of where I was going. And that caused a sense of apathy, or a kind of desensitization. I needed to take some time out to really zoom out of life and remind myself of what was important and I needed to ask myself the question, “How do I want to live?”

Do you think it was a successful process for you making this album? Successful not as a record, but emotionally, therapeutically—did it help?
To a certain degree. I mean, music, like anything, has its limitations. Therapy has its limitations. Exercise has its limitations. Eating vegetables has its limitations. There’s not one answer. But I tried to create a manifesto for how I would like to live, because I think I need it. 

But I definitely feel like, if anything, the things I take away from this record are partly that I have something that I can look back on, and it's something for my daughter to have as a memento, which is something I would have liked: a document about my parents, who I’ve lost, and sometimes I’ve struggled to find things out about them... Even like, I don’t have any recordings of my dad’s voice. I can't remember what his voice sounds like. So I feel like one positive thing is that I've put my soul into this thing and it's there.

I mean, one of the most beautiful lyrics on the record is, “Through the eyes of my child, I can see you in my vision,” which is, I mean, again, quite circular in its meaning but really quite touching and a really beautiful sentiment to put into a song.
Yeah, it was a real moment and a feeling that I had, and sometimes those are the most poignant ones too.

And the record's been out for two weeks or so now. How have you found the reaction from people, the press, the reviews, starting to play the songs live? Has anything surprised you, either in a good way or bad way, about how people have reacted to the record and hearing the tracks live?
It's always confusing, because there's been a lot of positive reactions and people really empathizing with the record and understanding where I'm coming from, or even building their own meanings on top of what I intended. At the same time, it's always quite humbling and it reminds me of me trying to connect to what it is I'm doing. But it has been touching. And it's great people connected but it's also quite disorienting, to be honest. I'm happy that it's out. Now it feels complete to me. I listen to it and I'm like, "This feels solidified now." And I can sort of start to move on a bit from it.

Does playing live help with that feeling? Is that another level of completeness to the record, actually taking it on tour? Do you enjoy playing live?
There's definitely moments where I really am like, "This is definitely special." I've got a great band, and that synergy on stage between us is something I really hook on to. And I'm inspired by them. They're all putting that energy into expressing something that I've written, which is really humbling. I mean, I get anxious on stage, and it's difficult, and I definitely don't take it for granted.

But, from seeing this show live and from listening to the record a lot before, the songs are very emotionally raw and open and honest, but, live, it became quite celebratory. It transforms from this interior thing into something extroverted. It’s a different kind of openness.
Oh yeah, definitely. It feels like that. Because there's times where I'm smiling, and I'm sure I wasn't smiling when I was recording some of these songs. The smile when I’m playing live comes from recognizing that connection. 

Having written a song as powerful as “No One Knows Me Like My Piano,” do you find this difficult to have to play live every night?
Yeah, I mean, at this point, I feel like it's almost transcended the moment it was written in. And also, maybe the worst thing would be to play that song and it not connect to a particular moment in my life. It doesn't fill me with pain now. In fact, if I do get emotional, it's a blessing to feel something.

I can sometimes struggle to connect with emotions, and music is an avenue for expression: by writing about it, you come to terms with it. I knew why I was doing it. I didn't feel like I was doing it for any sort of currency. It's a genuine thing I had to just get out. So yeah, I don't find it difficult. I enjoy singing the song.

Does the element of making it into a song kind of transform it in a way? By turning it into a piece of art, does it become its own thing, slightly separate?
Yeah, there's a lot of thought that goes into it. So, by the time I've put it down, lived in it; I've come to terms; I'm at peace with what I've done. And I still feel like there's potentially... I still don't necessarily go into great detail about very particular situations.

But maybe this is what I meant when I was talking about your voice as well. You might not go into detail, but you can feel it when you listen to your record.
Yeah. I sing it like I mean it.

“I’ll take West African folk music and then add polyrhythms and syncopation on top of that, which then finds its way into something funky—or it becomes hypnotic, a bit like Steve Reich, which also leads back to West African music.”