Saskia: Intimate Show

About

Saskia calls herself a happy girl making sad music, and the phrase holds. The bubbly exterior is real. So is the pensive interior - in which the songs document. She writes from the quiet end of the spectrum, where restraint does more work than volume with a palette shaped as much by James Blake and Radiohead as by the ambient glow of Sampha, Yebba and Massive Attack. Her sound can’t quite be classified but at the same time feels timeless, sitting somewhere between ethereal electronic soul and left-leaning R&B but what really matters is the weather system underneath, all rich chords, textural drum programming and meditative atmospheres that feel built rather than performed.