All work and no play can make me a weary boy. That’s why I’m diving into the patient, transportive R’nB of LA-based singer/songwriter
Shey Baba.
Requiem is his debut LP which he wrote over the course of two years spent in near isolation. The goal of his sabbatical was to record an album that can invoke a sense of immersive cinematography in the mind of the listeners, as a counterpoint to the way most people enjoy music today (e.g., as background noise). Baba has a soulful, mourning quality to his falsetto singing style that is not immediately identifiable as masculine, transgressing the boundaries of gendered performance much in the fashion of Haley Fohr of Circuit des Yeux. His style fits well within the deconstructed pop that perennially flows out of Scandinavia, earning him an opening slot for Norwegian singer Susanne Sundfør on her recent North American tour. Whether it is the wilting crestfallen dance of “Born Sick” and “Dreamer,” or the searching cool electronic rhythms of “Inside Out,” or the delicate needling flood of the title track “Requiem,” this album is a bountiful font of emotional complexity waiting to be tapped for your set.
Get yourself a copy of
Requiem here
