Msaki x Tubatsi (Black Coffee, Urban Village, Keleketla) new video out now

MSAKI x TUBATSI

RELEASE NEW VIDEO

WATCH ‘COME IN’ HERE
PRESS IMAGES HERE

DEBUT ALBUM ‘SYNTHETIC HEARTS’

OUT MARCH 10, 2023 ON NØ FØRMAT!

Afrofuturism and cello fuse on a heartfelt album of surprising romantic duets **** The Observer
A rather lovely, multilayered debut outing **** MOJO
Starkly beautiful and haunting in turn, Synthetic Hearts reveals itself in new ways on each listen **** The Skinny

Msaki x Tubatsi - a new project formed by fast-rising 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 Keleketla! alongside Tony Allen, Shabaka Hutchings and Joe Armon-Jones) - today release the video for new single, ‘Come In’. Directed by Kgomotso Neto TleaneIt and filmed on Johannesburg’s Northcliff Hill, the video & single are lifted from Msaki x Tubatsi’s debut album ‘Synthetic Hearts’ out March 10, 2023 through Nø Førmat! records (Ballaké Sissoko, Oumou Sangaré). The record also features French cellist Clément Petit (Aloe Blacc, Ballaké Sissoko) - the 3 artists originally encountered each other when Msaki & Petit guested on Urban Village’s critically acclaimed 2021 debut 'Udondolo’ (praised by Uncut, Loud & Quiet, The Quietus, Sunday Times), which examined both the contemporary experience of black South Africans and Apartheid. The video for ‘Come In’ is now available to stream from here.

‘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. Longing, confusion, sorrow and despondency, are opened up and negotiated. The new video for 'Come In' itself mirrors the track's counsel for vulnerability and trust with those we love.

Speaking about the video, its director Kgomotso Neto Tleane says; ‘Come In’ is a declaration of unshakeable love that invites a loved one into a deeply personal space, asking them to rest and remove all that has been weighing them down. The intention of the video is to reflect this messaging. The house is a representation of a safe space where you are able to be vulnerable with each other. 

Seeing Msaki & Tubatsi in separate spaces of the property in the beginning of the song symbolises that they are at a point where they aren’t able to be vulnerable and open up. As the video progresses we see them inside the house (the safe space) singing in unison and affirming each other's feelings. The intention is for the mood of the video to be real and relatable to any human who’s experienced love or yet to experience it.

The themes of ‘Synthetic Hearts’ echo the process of its creation, as two voices and three artists find ways to balance their sounds and journey alongside each other in these songs. Born in East London, South Africa, Msaki moves across electronic dance, folk, pop and amapiano with ease – rooting her sound in heartfelt lyrics that express the entangled personal and political. Msaki’s sophomore album ‘Platinumb Heart’ (2021), won her both Female Artist of the Year and Best Adult Contemporary Album at the 2022 South African Music Awards, and she’s also known for multiple chart-topping collaborations (Black Coffee, Diplo, Prince Kaybee, Sun-El Musician…). As part of Urban Village, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Tubatsi Mpho Moloi’s music digs into the strata of the post-apartheid reality, moving across folk, rock, mbaqanga and maskandi and more.

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.

‘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