Synthetic Hearts

Asanda Lusaseni Mvana, better known by her performing name Msaki, won Female Artist of the Year at the South African Music Awards (SAMAs) last year. She first collaborated with Tubatsi Mpho Moloi of Soweto quartet Urban Village when she guested on the group's 2021 debut album Udondolo. Subsequently they got together to write the nine songs for this joint project, on which they are joined by the French cellist Clément Petit. The result is a poetic, introspective, at times hushed, album about the complexities of love.

The production of Synthetic Hearts is crystalline yet minimalist and the settings sparse and spacious – and yet the effect is decidedly lush as Moli and Msaki's voices weave around each other in perfect balance and symmetry. There's a 1970s psych-folk feel to ‘Stay as You Are’. ‘Come In’ is a melting pop ballad of gossamer fragility and the heavenly harmonies on ‘Subaleka’ sound like an African version of Crosby, Stills & Nash. There's a stronger South African township rhythm to ‘Zibonakalise’ (Show Yourself), a prayer to ancestors for guidance through difficult times that Moloi wrote during COVID-19 lockdown. The closer ‘Fika’ mixes tribal chants with a ceremonial hymn-like reverence and finds Petit's playing at its most expressive. Synthetic Hearts is an album that's surprisingly hard to categorise – but ultimately it's about the two voices of Moli and Msaki, voices that sound as if they were born to sing together.