Santigold has always sounded rather remarkable to me ever since I heard Don Letts play her Lights Out on his radio show by chance one Sunday night about ten years back. It remains my favourite of her songs, probably because it was the first thing I heard. It seemed such an exciting fusion of dance and independent sounds and sensibilities, of darkness and light, not quite like anyone else.
She's remained in her own space ever since, even though plenty have taken her influence and run with it. She makes an effort to stake out her own territory once more on latest album, Spirituals, remarkably only her fifth. In some ways its built on the same basic DNA as her previous records. M.I.A. meets Missy Elliott on the dancefloor of a club in Kingston, Jamaica. But this sound was incredibly fresh when she first minted it on debut album Santogold, and remains so.
In the NME review of Spirituals they rightly state, 'Santi is merely part of the herd that she herself set stampeding.' What I love about her records is that they still sound futuristic. Echoey, full of dub, but also melody and funk, and music that makes you want to shake your hips and lose yourself in entirely.
Whether this lands high in lists of records of the year in December remains to be seen. I doubt it really, Santigold is hardly flavour of the month anymore, regrettably.But it will certainly feature in my own rundown which gets started in a couple of weeks. I fell in love with it on first play and it's set to keep me warm as the weather gets colder and the days get darker in the coming months.
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