XL Recordings owner Richard Russell has access to some pretty talented people, so earlier this year, he rounded up a bunch of them and released an EP called Close But Not Quite, under the name Everything Is Recorded. People like Giggs, Warren Ellis, Wiki, Ibeyi, Kamasi Washington, and Sampha worked with Russell on the project, and now Russell has teamed up with Sampha (a Mercury Prize winner) once more.
This time around, he paired the singer with Syd for a soulful new track called “Show Love.” The midtempo R&B duet features two amazing voices trading off verses and hooks over punchy and somewhat lo-fi beats and atmospheric synths and keyboards. The two are a natural pair, and this superlative vocal combination sounds like it was inevitable.
Russell previously said that Everything Is Recorded is about “transcending the ego,” saying, “There are some processes out there where people are going out of their way to make songs to be hits, to be commercial—that puts its weight on things. We weren’t doing that. We were trying to make things that were exciting, you get a certain feeling from.”
Watch the lyric video for “Show Love” above, and listen to more of Sampha’s work with Russell here.
