Sampha: Satellite Business
Pioneer Works, Brooklyn 6/21
I love live music and try my best to constantly surround myself with it, I even worked at a concert venue for a semester and it was one of my favorite jobs I’ve worked. With that being said, that also means that at this point I am rarely wowed by live performances anymore and that doesn’t mean I don’t have a deep appreciation for every concert I attend but it does mean that, for the most part, they tend to follow a very similar formula. However, the Sampha show I attended last week proved to me that maybe live performances are not all predictable. I had very few expectations going into that performance but could already tell it was going to be something special. The concert was one of only five performances by the British singer, three at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn and two at Hackney Church in London on what he called his Satellite Business Tour (however I am not entirely sure if it can be classified as a full-on tour). Sampha hadn’t released his own music since 2017 before these performances and released his first single in six years a few days after finishing the brief tour. I was attending this show solo, the way I preferred it to be that way so I could enjoy the performance to its fullest extent.
Walking into the venue I immediately knew that this show would be like nothing I had seen before. Pioneer Works was a place I was not familiar with prior to and the information I could find on it described it as a “creative space,” and, admittedly, I was not entirely clear on what that descriptor entailed. The space was very open concept, with a small merch section right upon entry and a beautiful garden to sit and grab drinks outside. The stage itself was small and circular with no barricade which was everything I could have ever wanted and more. There were multiple mics and instruments on stage for Sampha and his four-person band. Not to be dramatic, but when Sampha stepped on the stage I immediately transcended. He opened the show with a wonderful performance of Plastic 100ºC which just so happens to be one of my favorite songs of his. The show was a very healthy mix of his old music and unreleased songs presumably from his upcoming new album. The four people accompanying him were an absolute delight, not only their talent and performances but their engagement and undeniable chemistry with Sampha himself. One of the most memorable parts of the concert to me was when Sampha performed his ballad (No One Knows Me) Like the Piano, the performance itself was incredibly emotional and heartfelt but what stood out to me was that his band, that had been a part of every song thus far, sat down in a circle and stared at Sampha in awe, along with the audience, for the entirety of the song. In that moment it became so clear to me that every single person in that room, including Sampha’s own band, had so much love and admiration for the artist on stage. Unfortunately, it is simply a fact of life that at every concert there are people there just to say they saw someone live and not because they genuinely have a deep appreciation for the artist. That was not the case at Satellite Business. Given that it was such a small and intimate performance, everyone in the room was there to support Sampha just because they love him and everything he has done in the music industry. Being surrounded by so many people who share the same deep love for an artist as I do is something I have never been so lucky to experience before and I am so grateful for that show for allowing me to experience something so special. There was not a single part of the show that was anything less than excellent to me but my favorite part was easily when they performed Without, a song off of Sampha’s 2013 EP Dual as well as one of my all-time favorite songs (I’m not joking, the amount of times I have listened to that song is probably concerning to a lot of people). The studio version of the song has a subtle and addicting percussion element that the live performance heavily emphasized. Sampha and his band performed the song in the center of the stage with a large drum kit to accompany them. The two female vocalists in the band offered absolutely HEAVENLY backup vocals, I was being serious when I said I transcended that night. The most important part of the Without performance along with the rest of the show was how much Sampha seemed to be enjoying himself. So often nowadays, artists hold live performances because it is part of the obligation that comes with being a famous musician. Regardless of how much an artist may enjoy performing, months of intensive touring across the world is bound to take a toll on anyone, and any artist is going to get to a point where their heart is not in it anymore. Sampha’s heart was in it that night. The sheer emotion on his face with every song he performed and his little dancing around the stage evoked a childlike wonder within me; I cannot remember the last time I saw an artist seem so content and comfortable on stage like that.
Satellite Business may have been the first concert I have ever attended that fully brought me to tears aside from Lorde (Ribs live does something to me) and was truly so special to me. I will be sitting with this show for a while. It taught me that I have not seen everything that music has to offer again, it ignited an excitement inside me for live music that I have not felt for a while now. All in all, Satellite Business was unforgettable and if an opportunity to see Sampha live is ever presented to you, I cannot encourage you enough to take it.
Included below are some silly little pictures I took on my digital camera from like, circa 2006, enjoy <3
