Growing up between Boston, Massachusetts and Nairobi, Kenya, the 22-year-old Kwame can count singer, songwriter, producer, pianist and saxophonist as his accomplishments. It’s these far-reaching talents that come into the fore in new track “mt1430”. Immediately, we’re dropped into an already-moving tandem of carefully played strings and Kwame’s inviting voice. From here, the track continues to develop and change, as the Kenyan-Ghanaian musician either strips back sound or introduces fresh elements, but all the while retains an air of reminiscence. As we hear over and over, “I was thinking, I was thinking, I was thinking”, before we delve into yet another memory of youth. Not only is Kwame’s “mt1430” a fantastic example of how to mix multi-cultural influences without being obvious or overplayed, such as the African rhythms and American turn of phrases, but it’s also a well-executed experimentation with repetition. We hear almost the same notes in the same cycle for about four minutes, all building to the gospeletic finale complete with organ and choir. As a whole, this single exists in a dream-like state, so when it finishes with a simple, singular Open G guitar strum, we are returned to the real world. -HT