Sampha was even more stunning than you thought he'd be

NZ Herald·

24 May, 2017 09:00 PM3 mins to read

Sampha (pictured at Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival in April) wowed at The Powerstation in Auckland on Wednesday night. Photo / Getty

You could tell what kind of show we'd just seen by the reaction of the crowd afterwards.

Some stood silently, staring at the stage, wishing for more. Others danced deliriously around the Powerstation staff cleaning up the bottles and cups off the floor.

And outside, groups of people assessed what they'd just seen, words like "amazing ... stunning ... that voice" echoing down the street.

What we'd just seen was Sampha, a slowly rising UK star who has paid his dues writing and singing for big name rap and R&B stars like Drake, Beyonce and Frank Ocean.

Now, he's got his own album, his own sound and his own tour. And last night's Auckland show - his first in New Zealand - proved he's exactly where he should be. Sampha reaches his crescendo live, and it really was something magical.

Of course, you expected him to be good. In Process Sampha Sisay has a genuine contender for album of the year, a sound that takes 90s UK trip-hop and adds retro soul and electronic flourishes while intimately detailing real life hurts.

At once, it feels rooted in the past, while sounding very much like the future. And it's exactly the same live. But better.

That's because of Sampha's honeyed voice, which wrapped around the sold out Powerstation crowd right from the opening moments of Plastic 100°C, then through Process highlights Under, Reverse Faults and Timmy's Prayer, like a super snugly winter blanket.

But what you didn't expect were the walls of noise fury Sampha regularly inflicted on the crowd. As strobes flashed, his band hunched over drums and keyboards, bass throbbing and unsettling synth patterns echoing off the Powerstation's walls, it sometimes felt more like a Nine Inch Nails rock show than something rooted in soul and R&B.

Even Sampha seemed surprised by the noise they were creating. During the night's crescendo, the nightmarish Blood On Me delivered on a red cloaked stage, the music reached such a hammering finale he was forced to lean back from his keyboard with a slightly startled, perhaps quietly satisfied, look on his face.

But there was better to come. Sampha saved the best for last, aching his way through his stunning ballad No One Knows Me (Like The Piano) slowly but purposefully. Afterwards, the crowd was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

After a moment, a woman standing next to me turned to her friend and whispered: "I feel lucky to have seen that." It's true. We all did.