Song Exploder - Sampha - Spirit 2.0

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Sampha is a singer, songwriter and producer from London. His first album, Process, won the Mercury Prize in 2017. He’s collaborated with artists like the XX, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Solange. If you saw the Song Exploder Netflix show, Sampha was in the Alicia Keys episode, for the song they did together as a duet. This year, in October 2023, Sampha put out his second album, Lahai. And for this episode, I talked to Sampha about the song “Spirit 2.0.” Coming up you’ll hear the original demo, and some early voice memos. Sampha recruited some collaborators for the song, like producer Pablo Diez-Reixa, aka El Guincho, who won a Grammy for his work on Rosalia’s first album; plus Yaeji; and Lisa Kaindé, from Ibeyi. But the song “Spirit 2.0” first took shape when Sampha was by himself, at home. For more, visit songexploder.net/sampha.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Sampha is a singer, songwriter, and producer from London. His first album, Process, won the Mercury Prize in 2017. He's collaborated with artists like The XX, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Solange. If you saw the Song Exploder Netflix show, Samfa was in the Alicia Keys episode for the song they did together as a duet. This year, in October 2023, Samf put out his second album, La Hai. And for this episode, I talked to Samfa about the song Spirit 2.0.

Coming up, you'll hear the original demo and some early voice memos. Samfa recruited some collaborators for the song, like producer Pablo D.S. Reisha, aka El Gincho, who won a Grammy for his work on Rosalia's first album, plus Yeji and Lisa Kayende from Ibei. But the song Spirit 2.0 first took shape when Samfa was by himself at home. My name is Samfa.

I start a lot of songs off by like learning a new bit of gear or plug-in that will kind of get my brain firing and inspire something. And so I'd bought a new synth. I was like late summer, 2019. I was in a music store in the street called Denmark Street in London. I'd bought like an Oberheim, OB6. I'd also bought some semi-modular synths, the Moog, Mother 32s. I'm not super techy, but I do love to experiment and spend hours on bits of music.

And I was like, oh, this is reminded me or something. It's like a plucking of like a West African stringed instrument, like an Angoni or like a Cora. Those type of rhythms I got from listening to like Wazuli music from West Africa. My dad had a load of CDs and in my teens I found this album by an artist called Dumuzangari. It's called Umusangari. It's called Wauratan. It felt really kind of weirdly futuristic but also really sort of grounded and obviously it's all these acoustic instruments but the way they were being played was so fresh. I don't know, I just felt like it was magic.

This felt like the first time I was really like genuinely connected to music that was close to where my family from was just Sierra Leone. There's something innate about the way I kind of write music that shares this commonality with that type of music. It has like this foundation of complexity. So the song started with the Moog lines. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to build more upon that. Do another line and another line. There's this writer that talks about Gain, percussion, where the foundation is a complex rhythm that goes up like a piece of architecture. So that's how I kind of felt like what I was doing a little bit. So after I kind of established that with the Moogs, that's when the OB-6 came into play.

I started using it and I was like, I couldn't get the sounds I was hoping to get out of it for a bit. But then I decided to like bring all my sense to the sofa. It's just the place to just really relax, just to like figure it out and that's where I started to like really fall in love of it. I tuned the oscillator as a fifth apart from each other and came across these particular chords. I was kind of transported. When I listen to that, I'm like, that's it.

I personally could just listen to it. And that's what I did for a while. Just that on loop, just chords and mood. And I would go to parks, and it would just be like a calming thing and it was really resonating with me. And I put down some drums. Eventually, I heard like a vocal melody idea. Me in quite a reflective space,

I was feeling like I needed some bird's eye. view on my life. Every day was kind of just becoming, I guess, groundhog day-ish and I was just in it and I didn't really, I had no control over it or wasn't thinking about how to steer my life. Because there's times where I felt like very numb or apathetic. I still mess with this one, at the tempo of it because it's slightly faster and that kind of halftime vibe, but I still have love for it. But in the final version, I'd slow it down. I just started to hear this other drumbeat in my head. And then I was like, hearing this kind of break, beat version of the tune. I was thinking about programming it with electronic drums, but then I kind of wanted something that felt a bit more acoustic or like

woody. That's when I went to a studio called Rack in London and invited Yusuf Days down. Yusuf is a drummer, producer, artist in his own right, and it's just really one of my favourite drummers. I sort of like roughly gave him like the kick pattern I was thinking of and I wanted like half-time drums here and then it can switch to something and then he sort of just took that and just went, took it to like a level that was like beyond what I was imagining. I make music a lot in like pictures in my head. One of the pictures was like being in like a moonlit room. Lying in reflections,

moonlight hits your skin. And in my head I was thinking about the sun sort of hitting the moon and reflecting into this room in my mom's house. There was a particular type of moonlight that was really beautiful. So I was imagining being in this moonlit room with someone else having a conversation.

Safe in conversation. You question where I've been. And another visual I was having was like me sort of levitating through the ceiling towards the moon. And then I imagined falling. That's where all the catchy lyrics start to come in. Ways will catch you. Life will catch you. Love will catch you.

Spirit can catch you. Faith will catch you. Friends will catch you. Time will catch you. Flash will capture us. I was thinking a lot about spirituality at the time. but I don't think I was living a life that was recognising my need for whatever I thought the spirit was.

I feel like a lot of these questions came around as well when I started to lose people in my life and I'd be like, oh, I haven't had any sort of spiritual connection in terms of someone would be like, I'm here. It's like I can no longer locate them apart from in my mind, in my memory. And looking for some sort of like he. and trying to open up yourself to be helped. It can be a difficult journey. Traveling for healing, how far will I go?

Then I had a solid version of it and left it for a few months. The pandemic hit. And then I had a daughter. And the goal between actually working on the music, it started to grow. I got to a point a few months after my daughter was born, thinking about how am I going to actually, really reconnect with working on music and I feel like I might need a bit of help. And that's when I reached out to El Grinjo, Pablo, and he heard Spirit and he loved it. And he had some arrangement ideas. He was like, oh, maybe start the song off with the chorus.

Waste will catch you, life will catch you, love will catch you, spirit can catch you, yeah. He didn't want to completely like rework my whole song and like take it and make it something. totally different. He just wanted to help me add and finish and sort of was like really respectful of my vision. And then for the rap vocal bit, I just came up with the flow, but then I recorded it as a calling response to myself. Just like Jonathan Livingston, Seagull, try to catch the clouds in a three four. I was caught by the wings of my then you picked me up in your two door. I referenced Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which is a book

that my brother used to read to me when I was a young boy for bedtime. He was, he was a was a bird who wanted to perfect flying, he would climb up high and then he would dive down at like ridiculous speeds. And somehow I think I was just envisioning this as well, while I was envisioning myself falling, but then it's all being caught by friends or faith or wings of my my people. I was caught by the wings of my feet, then you pick me up in your suit door. There's Lisa from a bay who's kind of like doubling up what I'm doing in this section. Shutting down is your default, circling for the cheek go, sun is out and it feels cold, camera zoom with the ego,

find a bench I recall, memories with the people. Reconnected to the real goal, cameras are on the people. I just love her voice. I feel like I wouldn't be able to give that same energy. I think after that I started to envision strings. I'd always wanted to work with Owen Palette, who was a Canadian artist string arranger. And I've just been a big fan, especially of his album in conflict.

In particular, a song called The Passions. The strings on there are just like some of the most beautiful strings I've ever heard. He does this thing, this like sort of microtonal, ascending cluster of chords. I was like, this is so beautiful. Doing something like this in this particular section of the second chorus would be amazing. And so Owen, he rearranged the song. and then like a 32 piece orchestra recorded it

Faith will catch you friends will catch you time will catch you and then by the time I thought I'd finish the song I met up with the AG she heard some of the music and then she was like do you just jump on the mic

and she just restiled a bunch of stuff she was singing in Korean and I didn't really understand what she was saying it was something along the lines of what did the words say where did the words go and she translated it And I was like, oh wow, a lot of this is kind of resonating with what I'm writing about. And we sort of just found space for some of it on Spirit.

Do you think that your daughter's birth influenced this song in any way? It influenced the title. I mean, the reason I added a 2.0 onto Spirit, I was thinking about, you know, all these instruments and being surrounded by technology, but also I had a daughter. that was the first time I actually had this strong feeling of my mom, which I hadn't really had up until that point. When did you lose your mom?

In 2015, yeah. Got to thinking about being like a part of a continuum, this connection to everything, including her and thinking about the future and the past. When you gain something, it actually reminds you of what you lost as well. Coming up, you'll hear how all of these ideas and elements came together. in the final song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music

career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product. of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city,

like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. And now here's Spirit 2.0 by Sampha in its entirety.

Ways will catch you, life will catch you, love will catch you, spirit can catch you, yeah. Moonlight hits your skin, you question where I've been, body's on, the automatic self-protection, that's in, mind the open sky, I don't feel. feel so scared. With these open eyes, I can catch you, girl. Friends will catch you, catch you, Spir will catch you, friends will catch you, Flash will catch her,

traveling for healing. Spirit can catch you, Faith will catch you, friends will catch you, Friends will catch you, Waves will catch you, life will catch you, Spirrell can catch you,

just like Jonathan Livingston, Seagull, try catch you, Orchampton in the free fall. I was caught by the wings of my feet ball. Then you pick me up in your suit door. Hit the country rose. And you fill me in with the info. Stock was rising like 10 fall.

But you're mocking self in my head to. Shutting down is your feet for. Sun is out and it feels cold. Camera zoom on the beach. Find the bench I mean recall. Memories of the feel go. Camera zoom on my people. Or visit songexploder.

com. You'll find links to buy or stream Spirit 2.0. If you're looking for another episode to listen to after this, check out the Ebei episode from 2017. Lisa Cainte, who sang backing vocals on Spirit 2.0, breaks down a song with her twin sister and bandmate Naomi Diaz. You'll find that and all the other episodes of the podcast at SongExploder.net, or wherever you listen. This episode was made by me, Craig Ely, Theo Balcom, Kathleen Smith, and Mary Dolan. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,

a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about all our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on social media at Rishi-Hirway, and you can follow the show at SongExploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.