Honestly, I know we were not the only ones to wait for this comeback. Since the release of his fascinating solo album In Colour in 2015, Jamie xx has been pretty quiet in terms of releases even if he produced the soundtrack of Roman Gavras film The World Is Yours in 2018 and joined Headie One on his mixtape GANG last month. But the wait is now over as the producer and DJ has just dropped a surprise banger, “Idontknow”. Ready for the clubs, the frenetic track encapsulates the madness of our modern times with its thunderous percussions, melancholic yet indiscernible vocals, and never-ending tension. It also comes with a mini-video, featuring five dancers.

Five years after her debut album LP1, FKA Twigs is going to unveil her self-produced sophomore album MAGDALENE at the end of next month. According to the press release, it features major contributions from Nicolas Jaar. Oneohtrix Point Never, Cashmere Cat, benny blanco, Future, Skrillex, and Jack Antonoff are also credited. About the 9-track album, she stated:

[su_quote]I never thought heartbreak could be so all-encompassing. I never thought that my body could stop working to the point that I couldn’t express myself physically in the ways that I have always loved and found so much solace. I have always practiced my way into being the best I could be, but I couldn’t do that this time, I was left with no option but to tear every process down. But the process of making this album has allowed me for the first time, and in the most real way, to find compassion when I have been at my most ungraceful, confused and fractured. I stopped judging myself and at that moment found hope in ‘Magdalene.’ To her I am forever grateful.[/su_quote]

Coming with this announcement, she has also unveiled the second single of the album. “holy terrain” features rapper Future and was co-produced by Skrillex and Jack Antonoff. Watch the accompanying video, which was directed by FKA Twigs herself and Nick Walker, and check the full tracklist of the album below.

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Fka Twigs – “MAGDALENE”:

01 thousand eyes

02 home with you

03 sad day

04 holy terrain [ft. Future]

05 mary magdalene

06 fallen alien

07 mirrored heart

08 daybed

09 cellophane

Three long years after “Good To Love”, Tahliah Debrett Barnett aka FKA Twigs is back with an amazing new song and video. Titled “Cellophane,” the track acts as a “glimpse of what to expect from her second album” and was produced by Barnett herself, with assistance from Jeff Kleinman and Michael Uzowuru. Even if the wait was long, the multi-talented artist doesn’t disappoint with her poetic comeback single.

Enveloping like the material it refers to, her captivating, piano-driven electronic ballad comes with a breathtaking video directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, notably known for his collaborations with another visionary artist: Björk. In the visuals, FKA Twigs delivers an acrobatic pole dance performance in front of an alleged crowd and fights against a robotic mythological creature that obviously recalls the phoenix to mind. A few months ago, Barnett announced that she was suffering from fibroid tumors. After her surgery, she had to train a lot to come back in shape. Dealing with death and rebirth, her metaphorical video tells her story in the most striking way.

About the visuals, the artist tweeted:

[su_quote]when I wrote cellophane over a year ago a visual narrative came to me immediately, I knew I had to learn how to pole-dance to bring it to life, and so that’s what I did. thank you Andrew Thomas Huang for elevating my vision beyond words. you are a visionary.[/su_quote]

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Nobody sings quite like Sampha does. The character of his voice is instantly recognizable, occasionally goofy, and almost always interesting. This is apparent from the jump, as the extended, outer-space tinted metaphors of the opening track, “Plastic 100°C”, conjure up vulnerable images of Sampha melting like plastic under the heat of a symbolic sun. Poetic, sometimes elegiac lyrics are deeply wound throughout not only this song, but a healthy majority of the album. Lines like, “Sunshine and blue skies, yes I call. But now there’s a darker blue. I’m bleeding and you don’t care. The sun sinks and you’re not there” read like prose lost to time in a drawer of Shakespeare’s most insecure work.

On “Process”, Sampha brings forth some astonishing lyrics, but doesn’t always realize his full potential in bringing them from words on a page to vibrations in the air.

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Simple, honest, and mournful, “(No One Knows Me) Like The Piano” caught a lot of ears and garnered a lot of praise as the last single leading up to “Process”, and it proves to be one of the best examples of sonic storytelling on the album. Along with “Take Me Inside”, another mournful piano ballad, it seems to represent a wealth of untapped potential that Sampha misses out on through this project. In so many ways, songs like these are his natural habitat. They’re gorgeously stripped-down and transparent, showing off his ridiculously rare and distinct brand of piano playing, while complimenting his equally distinct singing in a way that frames his lyrics in the most favorable way. While interesting, the complex and sometimes convoluted electronic-flavored production that underlies a lion’s share of the album often sullies the stories being told, and highlights the wrong aspects of Sampha’s vocals – especially on tracks like “Kora Sings”, “Under”, and “Incomplete Kisses”.

What’s remains apparent on “Process”, though, is the sense that Sampha expressed himself exactly how he saw fit; and I can’t fault him for that. With talent and tendencies as exotic as his, there are bound to be some moments of dissonance and moments of greatness alike. And “Process” is just that: a collection of moments, good and bad, synthesized from those thousands of moments in Sampha’s own life that we never get to see – only hear about.

As you can see in the tweet, Sampha will start his tour in London and finish it in LA. This announcement comes some days after the release of his amazing last single “Blood On Me”.

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