SAMBA JEAN-BAPTISTE - +3

Losing yourself among the meanings of your own time, until you grasp them, chew them over and spit them into the nearest bucket. The songs of Samba Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian musician based in Brooklyn, break down thoughts, memories, fascinations, and listening habits of an artist compared here and there to Dean Blunt, though his DNA holds far more to tell, or at least to display on a stylistic level.

Because Samba Jean-Baptiste's songs are fragments scattered across the bed; snapshots of life that resurface even if only for a moment; emotions calibrated along a soul line that fades away within two verses, before a dubstep rhythm ends up dissolving by the third round of slowcore chords, and an unspecified string of private confessions unfurls between a broken piano and a sampled teardrop while a dog barks in the distance ("Peppermint").

"+3" contains seventeen snapshots of r'n'b songwriting cast in indietronic shapes. A record that at first evokes Frank Ocean as well as the aforementioned Dean Blunt, yet breaks free of any such comparison thanks to a deeply personal writing style, rich in excursions into the wonderful world of sound collage, as in "By The Wind", written and performed with Kerane Marcellus & Chloë LeStage, sudden neo-soul set pieces – take "Swan Song", a duet with Alana Markel, as an example – and sinuous electric offcuts, in a Tricky-like vein, so to speak, that slip restlessly along the way without following any set direction, as happens on the title track.

"I grew up in Massachusetts playing classical music with my sister, me on cello and her on violin, in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That's where my interest in music was born, because when I wasn't playing cello, everyone would show off, singing pop songs at the piano, and that's where it all started: writing a little song about a crush or something like that when I was a kid", Samba Jean-Baptiste recounts in an old interview for Radio Rainy Dawg.

Blending potential soul hooks with glitch backdrops seems to be the young composer of Haitian descent's favorite sport, and passages like "Statues & Symbols", once again with Chloë LeStage, underline this approach.

In this sequence of sketches on canvas, outlined with thin, at times neo-romantic lines, what's perhaps missing is the glue needed to give the whole a sense of underlying cohesion. Yet, despite this shortcoming, the blurred edges of "+3" still manage to form a sonic fresco that is vibrant nonetheless, never self-indulgent or crowd-pleasing. An album of subtle alt-folk songwriting with soul undertones that manages to break free without faltering, thanks above all to an unspecified series of electronic jolts that pop up on tiptoe just about everywhere ("Grey Sky Lunacy" feat. Swan Ellen Eden & Rockie Rode).

Granted, Samba Jean-Baptiste still has to refine this singular inclination of his, this gracefully dazed quality of his. But the groundwork is almost entirely solid, and for now the future is undoubtedly on his side.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

15/05/2026