Music Review: Dirty Projectors, “Dirty Projectors”

Music Review: Dirty Projectors, “Dirty Projectors”

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Dirty Projectors frontman, Dave Longstreth, has suffered through a multitude of lineup changes throughout his band’s 15 year stretch, but no shake-up has been more devastating than Amber Coffman’s departure. With this split from his girlfriend and final bandmate, Longstreth is solo once more. Coffman’s vocals were a staple of the band’s unique, Brooklynite, indie-pop style, and on Longstreth’s latest album, Dirty Projectors, her absence haunts every lyric. Longstreth is mournful – painting, in broad strokes, images of love, loss, and loneliness. Sonically, the album spins from one bold arrangement to the next. In all his isolation, Longstreth has made time for collaboration, the standout being “Cool Your Heart,” a whirling, calypso pop jam featuring DΔWN and co-written by Solange.

 

Music Review: Sampha Sisay, “Process”

Music Review: Sampha Sisay, “Process”

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Very rarely is a debut album as powerful as “Process.” For the soft-spoken, English born Sampha Sisay, who was introduced to the piano at the age of three, music creates for him a means of self-expression. For Sampha, whose wavering voice commands sober sovereignty in “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” a masterfully stripped down ballad about finding one’s voice and coping with grief through the comfort of music, tragedy strikes at every turn. Both of his parents were taken by cancer, and their absence fills the lyrics and quiet spaces of the album. Sampha too, was faced with his own mortality when he suffered a cancer scare not too long ago, discovering a lump in his throat, which he chronicles in “Plastic 100°C.” Previously, Sampha had lent his talent to big name artists, like Drake, Kanye, Solange and Frank Ocean, but with his debut album, Sampha begins anew. The album’s title can be seen as shorthand for “the grieving process,” or can refer to Sampha’s ongoing journey of self discovery. Either way, we’ll be right there with him.