WILL SAMSON

Paralanguage WICHITA

7/10

Fifth album from Brussels-based ambient auteur

If Paralanguage had been released around the turn of the millennium, its floating melodies and gently skittering beats would’ve been filed in that briefly trendy sub-genre dubbed ‘downtempo’. Inspired by his mild experimentation with psilocybin, there’s a trippy, otherworldly quality to Sansom’s programming and his ethereal, yearning falsetto. Traces of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Flaming Lips circa Yoshimi… and the kind of long-forgotten, slightly wimpish records that used to get shortlisted for the Mercury Prize 20 years ago are readily identifiable. Yet Samson transcends his influences and there’s nothing dated, derivative or debilitated about the tranquil immersion of songs such as “Flowerbed” and “Ochre Alps”.