The Hackney, east London producer-vocalist and model, who presents a persona as evasive, oddball, deliberately obfuscating “20,000-year old” “alien”, releases an esoteric, at times beguiling debut of offbeat trip-hop, filled with talking, stream-of-consciousness vocals mixed variously with guitar, assorted samples and electronica, also co-produced by Kwes Darko and Flume. Her throwaway, languid spoken delivery is downbeat, self-reflective and detached, while the production style is idiosyncratic, changing pace, stripped-back, using samples of instruments at various speeds as well as blurry voices. The dark, shadowy flavour has occasional echoes of mumbling 90s Tricky, M.I.A., or Mica Levi. Certainly hard to pin down, which is the point, in this pithy release of 30 minutes and 11 songs, the intrigue deserves some double-take attention on lyrics, such as opener Satellites: “Like a satellite in the dark / In the night / Whereabouts in the clouds like a kite / Floating in the winds let the birds float by.” Or on Don’t Cover Me: “Over my head, like the skies of the time/ Can't re-decide, what the chime of a mind / Was time a deceit?” Money Shows (feat. Eartheater) flows over simple electric fuzz guitar strums (“Go get a jet set and float like the water flows, yeah / But I never stay running where the money goes”). Emotions has some stylistically muted musical echoes M.I.A.’s Paper Planes, and is one of several songs that contain a mantra, here a form of icy (as in the name) detached braggadocio: “With no reason like I don′t feel it / Then I deep it/ Maybe it′s time I'm leaving / Cold as the ice I told them keep it/ I′m not fake nice / Moody when I don't feel it.” The Sampha-featuring Ocean Steppin’ (“Take the time, take it slowly / Know I like to live boldly/ But it's my life and they don't know me/ Ocean steppin' on shores/ Crash the wave, then I pause / Bring it back to the land / Full circle that to make plans / People touchin' on tangents/ Not with me, they can't manage it/ 'Cause I talk a lot about bands … Know me, but they don't know me”) is another strangely addictive track, flavoured by lo-fi piano samples and a floaty ethereal feel, while closer Heaven Sent repeatedly speaks over dreamy, soft sheen of guitar and keyboards: “Look into the skies and I think 'bout heaven's sent / Everywhere I'm going, and everywhere I went,” before fragmentary mission-control / quasi-religious vocal samples set a space-travel flavour. Perhaps the album is best summed up by the ambiguous, synth-laden Nevasure, in which she opines this look-at-me-don’t-look-at me message: “Never mind me 'cause I’m icy / On the rocks, on the wave, feelin' like I’m never sure. Indifferently different. Out on the same label as XX and FKA twigs – Young Records.
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