“Inner poetry eludes words,” said the 20th-century Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. “One doubts the exactness of words, their ability to express what we feel within us.” That awareness of the limitations of language guides Organ Tapes, a solo project of the London-based vocalist and producer Tim Zha. His new record on the Shanghai label Genome 6.66 Mbp takes its title from a Jiménez poem, and Zha also borrows the poet’s slippery linguistic approach. He slathers his vocals in Auto-Tune, to the point where discrete words often fail to materialize from within a waterfall of sound. “I want people to make their own meanings,” he told Dazed. “I want the song to function as something that approaches being outside language.” His alias is suggestive of emotions captured in a preverbal state, still roiling inside the body. Zha pulls sentiment straight from the gut.
The singer operates within a loose orbit of young London talents, including Mixpak vocalist Palmistry and Bala Club’s resident crooner Uli K, who’ve established a niche crafting delicate pop accented by R&B, trance, and dancehall motifs. With its large Jamaican population, London has long served as an inflection point where Caribbean influences bleed into fusion subgenres like ragga-jungle and 2 tone. This legacy has left contemporary London youth hyper-attuned to regional sounds from around the world—and ruthlessly willing to experiment with them. Under his DJ Corpmane alias, Zha makes off-the-wall edits that connect the dots between unexpected emotional valences in, say, baile funk upstart MC Pedrinho and screamo legends Circle Takes the Square, or Lil Peep and Kamixlo. That might sound like a gimmick, but Zha is totally sincere. He’s a bloodhound on the trail of raw feeling, following his nose wherever it might lead.
That omnivorous approach informs Into One Name. Like generations of bedroom pop musicians before him, Zha strips established forms down to a spare framework. His smudged melodies cast a homespun glow on the dancehall and Afrobeats sounds he loves. “Li Bu Kai,” which features Bala Club affiliate Yayoyanoh, pays homage to the Nigerian star Mr. Eazi’s tender 2016 Afrobeats hit “Skin Tight.” Zha—who grew up between London and Shanghai—sings in Chinese, and Yayoyanoh’s verse cites the original’s lovelorn refrain, “If you give your heart to me.”
Sometimes Zha’s approach doesn’t connect. On “New” and “All Night,” hooks never crystallize out of the spongy atmosphere. The Auto-Tune elides his vocals into background texture, and the outlines of pop songs struggle to emerge from the gloom. Elsewhere, the record leans too heavily on pastiche. “Song” has a catchy hook, but it follows in the jetstream of melody-friendly rappers like Trippie Redd and Future without adding to their formula.
Into One Name succeeds when Zha contrasts blurry sounds with strange, sharp details. On “Something,” Zha floats over a translucent riddim bursting with 8-bit chirps that glisten like dew on a soccer field. He resembles Alkaline by way of Daniel Johnston. “Can I Know,” a duet with the like-minded London singer Malibu, isolates a fun mood with surgical precision—it’s just two voices harmonizing over a breezy kalimba loop, like the hold music you might hear while calling to book the world's coolest cruise.
Best of all is “Seedling,” a breathtaking jam that pops up near the end of the record. Zha sculpts a few sparse details—flute, xylophone, frosty synth—into what sounds like a trance rave captured in a snowglobe. “I’m burning inside, and I’m freezing,” he sings, in thrall to the mind-melting paradox of unrequited love; “I lost it, I feel it, I’m broken, I need it.” The tension builds toward a major percussive climax complete with crunk-inspired “What!” and “Hey!” samples. At the end of a record that scrupulously avoids fixed meaning in favor of fragile moods, it feels good to hear Zha get something real off his chest.
