All I need is to be where I wasn’t

Bristol-based producer and vocalist bonsi is current with this arresting new single, her first solo work since her 2020 album Sustain (there was a great collaboration with Harvey Causon in 2021 that I’m also sharing below).

Clocking in at just over two and a half minutes, “Four Faces” is minimalist both compositionally and temporally, but it’s rich nonetheless. There are plenty of checkbox elements: found-sound rattles and scrapes, truncated sliding organ licks, hollowed-out bass stabs, all anchored by a nice sludgy kick rhythm. But it’s bonsi’s vocals that shine here. Instead of succumbing to the temptation to soak a pretty vocal like this in reverb, they’re just the right amount of dry, which gives them an immediacy; like someone singing to themselves at the bus stop or under an umbrella walking across town. Combined with a set of occasional up-and-down-pitched backing vocals, that immediacy takes on an almost dissociative quality, as if bonsi is right here next to you, but also slipping down a storm drain or up a chimney.

Grab the single on bandcamp or stream it all over.

bonsi – “Four Faces” (bc)

bonsi – “Mouth of Shame” ft. Harvey Causon (bc)