Taken from their debut album ‘Synthetic Hearts’, out on March 10, 2023, through Nø Førmat! records (Ballaké Sissoko, Oumou Sangaré), Msaki x Tubatsi have today shared their tranquil new single ‘Come In‘ alongside a lyric video. Msaki x Tubatsi is a new project from South African solo star Msaki (a double winner at the 2022 South African Music Awards) and Tubatsi Mpho Moloi of Johannesburg band Urban Village (also a member of the Keleketla! collective alongside Tony Allen, Shabaka Hutchings and Joe Armon-Jones). The album also features French cellist Clément Petit who also composed ‘Come In’.
‘Synthetic Hearts’ itself is both introspective and conversational – disentangling emotions and considering what is shared and private in the messiness of our relationships with ourselves and others. The album “speaks about having an equal responsibility to look after each other” and questions how “we express feelings of love towards each one another”, Moloi explains. Love, longing, confusion, sorrow and despondency, are opened up and negotiated. The new single release ‘Come In’ is a perfectly uncomplicated love song, a declaration of unshakeable commitment that wears itself with a determined assurance. With each repetition of the gauzy refrain, this assurance grows ever stronger, as the invitation is made again and again: “So come in / I love you / Take off your chains / So come in / I love you / Kiss me again”.
Msaki and Moloi’s folk sensibilities are present on ‘Synthetic Hearts’, even as it too defies easy categorisation, mixing live and electronic elements, as Petit teases out distinct textures from his cello. Raised in a diverse, community-based Parisian banlieu, Petit’s approach reflects his early immersion in Afro-American, Caribbean and electronic music, vast experience in contemporary and improvised music, and quest to continually reinvent instruments, rewrite the rules and find new musical languages. “He doesn’t treat the cello like a classical cellist”, Msaki notes.
‘Synthetic Hearts’ began with ideas from Petit’s archives, with Msaki and Moloi selecting the songs that resonated, to forge something new together over a week-long residency at Nirox Sculpture Park (just outside Johannesburg) in April 2021. Recorded at Jazzworx, Johannesburg and co-produced by Petit and Frédéric Soulard, it’s a body of work that intentionally reveals the inescapable brokenness at the heart of what it means to be human, and the inescapable risk of what it means to love.
Pre-order ‘Synthetic Hearts’ here