Review
Kwesi Sey’s first solo album in eight years was catalyzed by his daughter spilling water over a drawing and immediately starting a new one. That brief flash of frustration yielding to a serene reset forms the conceptual bedrock of Kinds, a 29-minute collection of beatless, color-coded ambient compositions.
Rather than the intricate pop of his past, critics observe that Kinds leans into an immersive minimalism. The project unspools as a "suite of sweetly cloudy ambient miniatures in which reverb and muffled compression threatens to swallow the music whole," according to Philip Sherburne’s Futurism Restated. Stripped of percussion entirely, the tracks drift into a steady swell where, as Arcana notes, "the music hangs suspended like a thick cloud," yet maintains a "sure sense of direction" through slow-moving harmonic shifts.
Reviewers consistently emphasize the record's tranquil, meditative atmosphere. Drawing comparisons to Stars of the Lid and Brian Eno, these textural sketches map colors to moods with an understated, "stoically melancholy" resonance—a humble, tactile exercise in hitting the reset button.
