Gayance - Roaming

Gayance is Aïsha Vertus, born in Montreal-Nord, of Haitian descent, and a decade-long nomad across Brussels, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Brazil. Her debut, Mascarade, on Rhythm Section International, earned a Polaris Prize shortlist and introduced her as a performer. roaming, out in October on Tru Thoughts, is a different kind of record. Where the debut announced her, this one documents her.

She describes it as a project she “didn’t know she was working on for the past decade,” a scrapbook of whatever she was living through. That framing could so easily produce something vague and diaristic. What’s notable is that it doesn’t. The seven tracks are precise and direct, each one doing a specific thing: Better For My Heart, with Judith Little D, is house, R&B, and gospel drawn together around emotional release, a song apparently in development for several years before it landed here. Podjab, featuring Waahli, is rooted in Haitian carnaval and Mizik Rasin and doesn’t dilute either, sitting as an explicit statement on diaspora resistance. Ensemble, her first composition in French, is about chosen family and the necessity of limits. These are not soft subjects handled gently.

The range of reference across the album, broken beat, jungle, gospel house, UK garage, carnaval, is wide enough that it could easily feel like a genre showcase rather than a cohesive record. It doesn’t, and the reason is straightforward: the personality holds it. The closer, Agua, brings in NARCY and De.Ville and grounds the whole thing in something somatic and political at the same time, which is a difficult register to hold. It holds it.

She taught herself production in Ableton during lockdown, and the self-made quality of the record is audible in the best sense, decisions that belong to one person rather than the consensus of a studio. She calls the songs “no bullshit edits,” and that’s accurate.

roaming came out on vinyl and digitally via Bandcamp. It is the kind of sophomore album that actually earns the word.