Megiapa: Intentions, a debut split between Chicago and LA

Intentions is a debut that behaves like a diary kept in transit. Megiapa's voice stays low and level, the production moves underneath it, and the fourteen tracks run 37 minutes with almost nothing left over. Released on International Anthem on 25 September, it makes settling down sound restless.

She is a producer, vocalist and visual artist who started in Chicago's underground beat scene and is now based in Los Angeles. Intentions is her first full length, made across a couple of years of change and movement, and the album keeps that shape: arrivals, exits, a place found somewhere in the middle. The Growth Eternal, the pianist Ahmad Muhammad, who records as Kafari, and the drummer Mekala Session all appear.

The production carries most of the argument. Beats stutter, open, then drift; synths arrive washed out and stay that way; harmonies stack under a lead voice that never raises itself above them. The bass is the anchor, a slap-bass figure on the opener and a warm low end under everything after it. It is a record of texture first and volume second, which is why the guest playing matters: Kafari and Session give the shorter tracks a floor.

'Open Your Eyes' sets the terms: soft delivery, soulful harmonies, and a line that states the record's whole case, 'Open your eyes, darling, you'll see / All things are possible.' The tempo drops away at the end and the track closes on a hushed spoken passage, a move the album makes more than once. 'Dreaming About You' is the gentlest thing here, its instrumentation kept light so the song can be pulled under into the reverie it describes. 'Black Gold of the Sun' spreads its harmonies out and lets them blur.

'My Baby' is the pop move, bright synth lines and a nostalgic daydream it has no interest in leaving. '11.11' rides a jazz-infused backing and drifts, the closest the album gets to another room. 'Can't Believe' is where the writing turns plain about heartache, and the plainness works.

'wishing (u) well' is a collage of spoken word over a changing cast of voices, and it never resolves. 'on the spaceway (frfr)' is piano-led and off-kilter, melodies leaning where you do not expect them to, and it is the track most openly in debt to Sun Ra. 'Crashing Down' is the peak: built like an incantation, and carrying the album's best line, 'When everything comes crashing down, but you'll be ok.' 'rising_outro' closes in under two minutes by asking to be seen and heard.

This is for the listener who plays soul records for the low end and the space around the voice, and for the beat-scene audience that followed Megiapa from Chicago. It suits a slow morning and a long drive equally. On headphones the layering rewards a second pass. On speakers it works as background until 'Crashing Down' arrives and stops being background.

The flaw is brevity. Ideas arrive and leave before they have finished; 'To Enjoy' is a gloopy instrumental that passes in just over two minutes and takes nothing with it, and the two spaceway tracks could have been one. The softness flattens the middle stretch, too. Because the voice rarely rises, the dynamic range comes almost entirely from the production, and by track nine the trick is familiar.

Intentions is a debut that already knows what it sounds like, which is rarer than it should be. There is no bad track on it, only two or three thin ones, and 37 minutes is a disciplined length for a first album with this many guests. Four out of five: earned, and better on the second play than the first. By the last track, the asking is beside the point.

The tracklist

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