How Frida Kahlo, The Historical Egyptian Guide of the Lifeless, and Burning Faux Chinese language Cash Impressed Ibeyi’s New Album

In dialog, Ibeyi’s Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz can’t cease talking over each other. Sitting facet by facet on a sofa at their label XL’s labyrinthine Manhattan workplace, the French-Cuban sisters steadily crack jokes and fact-check one another on their telephones as they speak in regards to the far-reaching inspirations behind their newest album, Spell 31. Their clear sense of affection evokes the identical loving, familial concord that radiates all through their music.

Spell 31 is an act of cleaning for Lisa and Naomi. Written after the primary pandemic lockdown between UK studios in Dorset and London, Ibeyi labored with longtime producer and XL label head Richard Russell to push their reflective sound ahead. On jubilant lead single “Sister 2 Sister,” the duo commerce verses and participate in a playful call-and-response refrain that instructs listeners on tips on how to pronounce their title (it’s “ee-bey-ee,” by the best way); on “Los Muertos,” a canopy of the tune “Rezos” by their late father, the percussionist Angá Díaz, they recite an inventory of names of household, associates, and inspirational artists who’ve handed over echoing drums and a ghostly vocal pattern. As Spell 31 attests, there are lots of other ways to enter Ibeyi’s meditative universe.

As we talk about the album, it rapidly turns into clear that Lisa is the chattier of the 2, unspooling tales from the sisters’ previous at a rapid-fire tempo. Sporting all black, except for a pair of mint-green Crocs, she explains that their data have at all times been extra impressed by visuals than different music. To show the purpose, she pulls up organized folders of saved photographs in her telephone, each pegged to a selected tune. Naomi, in the meantime, is the extra avid reader and crate-digger, pushing Lisa to be extra concept-based of their work. Lisa can be a cinephile, a high quality impressed on her at an early age by their father. They breathlessly recall the time he took them to see the 1999 anime basic Princess Mononoke in theaters as youngsters: “We had been a bit traumatized,” Naomi admits as she considers the surprisingly violent environmentalist fable. “We additionally liked it,” Lisa is fast so as to add.

For Spell 31, the duo took a free method to the songwriting course of, typically deciding on random passages from books as inventive prompts. Whereas their sophomore album, 2017’s Ash, took inspiration from fashionable writers like Claudia Rankine and Jennifer Clement, Spell 31 was extra impressed by works of antiquity, just like the Egyptian Guide of the Lifeless and the Capitoline Wolf, a Roman bronze statue of a large she-wolf. “It’s essential unleash that wolf inside,” Lisa says, suggesting a tenet. “It’s one thing highly effective.”

Right here, Ibeyi speak in regards to the many inspirations that discovered their means into Spell 31.