For their fourth album, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz reshape their hybrid, twin, mystical pop, more enchanting than ever.
Four years after their third album, Spell 31, the Ibeyi sisters, who have carved a name in the legendary path traced by their father Anga Díaz, the percussionist of Buena Vista Social Club, have emancipated themselves from XL Recordings, their longtime label since 2014: “We wanted to reclaim the energy, the freedom and the confidence of the first album,” they explain. “To achieve this, we needed to lose ourselves a little.”
Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz therefore launched their own label, while allowing themselves to collaborate with a multitude of contributors. Around them, Michaël Brun, who had served as producer alongside them, Khalil Cherradi, Pablo Pablo, Jason Pounds and Jack Peñate: “For the first time since the beginnings of Ibeyi, we traveled to find the right people, try out new sonorities, discover what we were capable of so as to push ourselves and progress, vocally and artistically.”
Sont convoqués groove R&B, percussions afro-cubaines et mélopées caribéennes
Their itinerary charted a course through London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles… and Cuba, crowning the realignment at the core of Offering. The deities of ancient mythologies are invoked, as are grooves of R&B, Afro-Cuban percussion and Caribbean melodies. On the menu, the tribal textures of Baba or Aset, the mystical soul of Offerings, the graceful strings of Focus, briskly disrupted by hip-hop rhythms—providing a fertile ground for Moshpit.
The pop becomes tender with ballads such as I Know You Loved Me, Good Life and the gospel-tinged Lucky. Always polyglot, Ibeyi delivers – an unprecedented move – a performance in French on La Tendresse d’un mot, a twin-love declaration born around Sofiane Pamart’s Rhodes piano.
“Ibeyi contient le yin et le yang de nos énergies contraires”
In incantatory mode or soaring upward, the voices of Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi answer each other, intertwine, and elevate one another—timbres preserved despite the intervention of numerous sonic effects.
“We have gone through life’s trials that are very similar and concurrent, which this album tells,” they explain. “It balances our two personalities, our two universes. Ibeyi contains the yin and the yang of our opposing energies. Although increasingly different, we feel closer than ever… and even more together.”
Offering (Ibeyi Records/Awal). Release on June 26. Live in concert at Cirque d’hiver Bouglione, Paris, on November 9.
