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Even when using Auto-Tune on Imini Yesithembiso, the opener to Synthetic Hearts Part II, Msaki x Tubatsi transform it into something beautiful. This highlights one of their album’s undeniable strengths—creating music that finds the humanity and inspiration to generate a positive force; track after track, they reignite and broaden the belief in what music is and what it can do.
Recorded at the same time as the original Synthetic Hearts album released in 2023, the new collection is a step beyond, not merely refining their style but expanding their vocabulary. The depths are more significant; the sounds are more alive. Describing herself as a sound collector, Msaki navigates between folk, pop and electro, while Tubatsi Mpho Moloi, multi-instrumentalist and singer, is also the vocalist for the experimental Soweto quartet Urban Village. Working with the cellist Clément Petit, who also serves as producer with Frédéric Soulard, they have created work stylistically different from virtually anything else out there.
Though both albums were recorded at the same time, Petit and Soulard seem to have generated a new framework, one more daring and imaginative, as if the first album was merely preparation for the unexplored depths of Synthetic Hearts Part II. The auto-tuned vocals framing the beginning of Imini Yesithembiso seem to be playing an elaborate game of cat and mouse, being replaced by the more natural vocals of Tabatsi. When Msaki returns, the auto-tune, though still there, no longer distracts, being a more wholly integrated element of the song. The proceedings have an unexpected lightness, suggesting a balancing act of colours and tones.
They have created a confluence of simple and completely unexpected sounds. The plucked cello on Leithlo Laboraro establishes a dark sensibility, while the mbira offers a totally different feel of strings. While the beginning feels dark, with spoken vocals adding an austere feel, transformations produce something with a different feel by the song’s end as vocals and synths play to a distinct edge.
The deployment of Petit’s cello, both plucked and bowed, creates a wealth of sounds from dark to breezy, as heard on Off the Ground, which, along with synths, delivers splashes of colour, filling the song with hope, a quality that Msaki and Tubatsi playoff with vocals and harmonies that stand out against the sparse instrumentation which also reinforces dialogues, a musical equivalent of shadows and light.
Magic occurs somewhere between the cello of Clément Petit and the vocals of Msaki and Tubatsi. Synthetic Hearts Part II is one of those rare times when the second helping is even better than the first. Collaborations like this happen very rarely. Savour it.
Synthetic Hearts Part II (24th May 2024) Nø Førmat!
