Settle in, because Samiyam‘s Sam Baker’s Album is a long listen. There’s 17 tracks to get through here, blending the genres of hip hop and funk with a thousand other unexpected things.

Opening track ‘Bitty’ begins all chimey 80s fantasy film, but the full-on beats kick in just before the minute mark. The clap-hand snare on this track is pretty harsh, and that helps to toughen up the surrounding shimmery layers. In fact, most of the tracks on the album are a blend of glimmery synths, and beats that veer more than a little towards the hip hop spectrum. Vocals are kept to a bare minimum, with only a few samples of rap and speaking.

The best parts of this album come when Samiyam focuses on his re-interpretation of hip hop.’ Bricks’ feels like a hip hop track that’s been sent through a haunted house. The traditional parts are chopped up and reconstituted into something much darker, accompanied by a shivery rattlesnake noise, which sounds strange, but turns out to be a stroke of genius. Other tracks like ‘My Buddy’, and ‘Wonton Special’ continue in a similar vein – reconstructed hip hop beats, with just the slightest sprinkling of vocals – piecing together snippets of rap with sounds that could be straight out of a level of Mario. It sounds like a weird combination, and it undoubtedly is, but it actually works.

The most bizarre song to be found here is definitely ‘Kitties’, which references Catcher in the Rye, but turns out to be almost entirely composed of miaows. I’m pretty sure no other album this year will be able to boast a literary reference combined with cutesy animal noises, but then again, this isn’t necessarily a triumph. There are other sounds on here that are like nothing I’ve ever heard in a song. For example, ‘Understanding’, includes something which could well be someone shaking a glass jar of beads over the backing beats. This alone deserves points for sheer inventiveness.

That said, there are other sections on this album when the sound feels excessively dry. There’s a lot of snare action going on, and occasionally I found myself wishing there was more of a melodic accompaniment.

Much of the time, the tracks on this album feel like they’re lacking something concrete to hold them together. They seem like tracks that are yet to have final vocals added, or pieces that are only partly finished. Whilst this lends them their own charm, it gives the album an elusive, hard to grasp feeling.

There’s no doubt that these are pieces that have been meticulously constructed, but the album feels quite disparate, and it’s unclear what’s keeping it together. Although Samiyam’s skill cannot be questioned, there’s an underlying feeling that Sam Baker’s Album doesn’t quite hit the spot.