Bleep

Sparking harmony between London and Freetown, multi-disciplinary artist Duval Timothy is joined by singer Rosie Lowe in this new work exploring vocal arrangements in piano compositions.

Son unfolds like a layered dream, of lush vocals and oceanic samples guided by piano arrangement. It narrates the melancholy of a difficult world subdued by generational expectations, whilst singing of its own freedom with heartfelt sincerity. As an artist working between his birthplace in England and his family’s home in Sierra Leone, Duval Timothy’s work in music and beyond intrinsically deals with the spectre of diaspora. Across a couple of years, Son was recorded between the two locations, inviting Rosie Lowe to Freetown for its composition and involving the musical contribution of many close friends. It was a gradual project, designed with open doors to benefit from the different experiences and locations it had entangled itself with. As a composer, Timothy intertwines jazz, R&B, soul, spoken word and field recordings interspersed with pensive moments of silence, using live instrumentation and sampling to paint intimate pictures.

While carrying the past of entire communities, Son’s 9 tracks are ethereal, vignettes of emotion which pass by and wash over. In its first half, influences of choral music shared by Timothy and Lowe utter deep emotions without words, releasing listeners from the weight of language and into sublime realms. After a speechless beauty that continues to build, the title track depicts a mother who tells her son he needs to fit in in order to survive. In the manner of his previous acclaimed album Help from 2020, Timothy navigates historical memory through sound as a challenge to unravel its dark abstractions.

Taking a cycle of suffering as a central theme, the album ritualises a moment of collective mourning in the process - but the radical, beauty of his projects fashioned mindfully and communally, envisions emancipation.