Msaki x Tubatsi share new video from acclaimed debut album
Afrofuturism and cello fuse on a heartfelt album of surprising romantic duets **** The Observer
A rather lovely, multilayered debut outing **** MOJO
This is definitely one to seek out Clash
A vital creative collaboration, born of an effortless blend of pop, dance, folk, and electronica Under The Radar
Starkly beautiful and haunting in turn, Synthetic Hearts reveals itself in new ways on each listen **** The Skinny
Come In is a haunting ballad that deserves to be a hit on several continents Ladygunn
Msaki x Tubatsi today release a new video for ‘Stay As You Are’, lifted from their well-received debut album ‘Synthetic Hearts’, out now on Nø Førmat! records (Ballaké Sissoko, Oumou Sangaré). The new project brings together 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 French cellist Clément Petit (Aloe Blacc, Ballaké Sissoko). ’Synthetic Hearts’ is now streaming from here, with the new video for ‘Stay As You Are’ available to watch here.
Speaking about the new video - filmed in Zanzibar - director Sanaa says; ‘Stay As You Are’ is a reflection of Stone Town in Zanzibar captured using an iPhone. Opening with a long shot following the Maasai into the everyday life in the Ocean. We see all age groups engaging differently in the same space, staying true to the beautiful rituals done in history of the Island.
Speaking about the track itself, Msaki notes; It’s a song about vulnerability. Are these people speaking to each other, or about their other journeys? Really, it can be both. I know your story, now you know mine. These lines are really important to me - ‘Stay as you are, even till the day you grow older. Even my shadow knows’. The shadow is where the pain stays, where your dark side stays. In every failed relationship people fail to integrate their dark side into the light. They didn’t find a way to come to the light and heal. There’s a pledge here, to make that space a little bit lighter, to find a way to express my true self here, where the ego and pride can die, and I can find real healing. So it’s a slightly deeper love song than meets the eye.
Tubatsi adds; ‘Stay As You Are’ is mostly a conversation. In life, there are so many things happening and changing, and this song speaks about comfortableness, uncertainty and confirmation to say: I appreciate you and as you are, with me around you, I am happier. It's one of my most favourite songs, it helps me remain in light and keeps me staying as I am.
As individual artists in their own rights, the discographies of Msaki, Moloi and Petit attest to an ability to shapeshift across genres. 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…). Similarly, as part of Urban Village, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Tubatsi Mpho Moloi’s music digs into the strata of the post-apartheid reality.
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.
The album is both introspective and conversational – disentangling emotions held within, and considering what is shared and private in the messiness of our relationships with ourselves and others. ‘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 in April 2021. Composed at Nirox Sculpture Park, just outside Johannesburg in an organic and unprescribed process, the music naturally moved towards explorations of love’s knotty realities, in what they describe as a productive and unlaboured creative process.
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.
