A Sense of Doubt blog post #4249 - "Moshpit" (and others) - Ibeyi from new album Offering
I love Ibeyi.
Ibeyi - "Moshpit"
https://beatsperminute.com/album-review-ibeyi-offering/
For more than a decade, an Ibeyi song meant two things you could count on: Naomi Diaz behind a cajón or a set of Batá drums, and her twin sister Lisa-Kaindé at the piano. Offering, the duo’s fourth album, has neither. The sisters spent this record handing both instruments to a rotating cast of producers they had never worked with before, leaving only the one thing that was never up for negotiation: their voices, sung together so closely that on several tracks it’s genuinely hard to tell where one stops and the other starts.
Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz were born in Paris in December 1994, to a Cuban father and a French-Venezuelan mother, and spent their first two years in Havana before the family settled back in France. Their father, Miguel “Anga” Díaz, was a Grammy-winning percussionist who played with the Latin jazz group Irakere and later joined the Buena Vista Social Club, performing alongside Ibrahim Ferrer and Compay Segundo. He died in 2006, when the twins were 11. Naomi picked up his cajón soon after, and the sisters began studying the Yoruba songs and Santería traditions that ran through their father’s side of the family, the same traditions that gave the duo its name. Ibeyi means twins in Yoruba.
Their mother, Maya Dagnino, pushed Lisa-Kaindé toward songwriting, and by their late teens the sisters were performing around Paris. In 2013, XL Recordings founder Richard Russell found a video of them singing “Mama Says” online and brought them to London to record. He produced their self-titled debut himself. Released in 2015, it’s an album built around their father’s death and dedicated in part to an older sister, Yanira, who had died two years earlier. A second album, Ash, followed in 2017 with guest spots from Kamasi Washington and Meshell Ndegeocello, and a third, Spell 31, arrived in 2022, its title and several of its songs drawn from passages in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Along the way the sisters appeared in the visual album for Beyoncé’s Lemonade and built a reputation, especially in Britain, as one of the more serious acts of the decade, heavy on harmony and heavier on ancestry.
Offering is their first album away from XL. They haven’t said publicly why they left after three records and more than 10 years with Russell, who produced or co-produced all of it; the new album comes out instead on their own label, IBEYI Records, distributed through AWAL. It also arrives after a stretch of years in which the sisters were largely based in different countries, a separation that goes back to the making of Spell 31. Part of the new record was written and filmed in Havana, in the city where their father once worked, a return both sisters have described as necessary before they could move forward with anything new. Naomi has talked about the album as a step into adulthood and self-assurance; Lisa-Kaindé has called it more of an exercise in trusting what comes next without knowing the shape of it yet.
The title marks the turn directly. Where Spell 31 was about invocation, calling on ancestral protection through magic words borrowed from an old text, Offering is built around the opposite idea: giving something up instead of asking for something back. Lisa-Kaindé has said the shift arrived almost literally, in a vision of Yemayá, the orisha of the sea, who told her she was done with spells and should make offerings from here on. The phrase became the album’s name and, more or less, its method.
That method plays out across 12 songs in under half an hour, almost none of them past three minutes. “Olokun” opens the record as little more than a short chant for two intertwined voices, named for the orisha who rules the ocean depths. “Aset” follows, and despite being framed as the album’s reach toward Egypt, it’s really an extension of ground the sisters had already opened on Spell 31: the song retells the story of the goddess Isis gathering forbidden knowledge to bring her dead lover back, here turned into a question about whether devotion that large ever gets repaid in kind. It was co-produced with the Haitian artist Michaël Brun. “Baba” addresses Elegguá, the orisha who opens roads, and moves by its end into something closer to a statement of independence than a request for one.
Elsewhere the sisters push further than they have before. “Moshpit” is the clearest case, a harder, more electronic track that would have sounded out of place on any earlier Ibeyi album and mostly works because the voices hold steady inside it rather than trying to match its aggression. “La tendresse d’un mot,” sung largely in French alongside the pianist Sofiane Pamart, slows things down into a quieter promise to stay the same while someone else changes, with a glancing line about how a public career complicates a private one. “I Know You Loved Me” works through a breakup in plainer terms, trust wearing down across the verses, while “Hurry Hurry” drops the mythology almost entirely for what amounts to a direct marriage proposal — the most unguarded thing on the record.
The shorter pieces, “Focus” and “The Process,” function more as connective tissue between the longer songs than statements in their own right, and “Lucky” closes the album quietly, bringing it back down to just the two of them, the way it began.
What holds the record together, more than any single producer or instrument, is that the voices never stop sounding like Ibeyi. They have reasserted themselves by writing most of this one as a duo, even while handing the instruments to other hands. The album is short enough that a couple of its quieter pieces pass before they fully land, and longtime listeners may miss hearing Naomi actually behind the drums rather than directing someone else toward them. But the record does what it sets out to do. It sounds like two people choosing, on purpose, to let go of something they had held onto for a decade, and discovering the sound holds up without it.
Album Review: Offering by Ibeyi
By handing it to a crew of producers with songs of Yoruba invocation and heartbreak, the sisters’ blended voices are the through-line that survives the new electronics.
Four years came and went between Spell 31 and this release, and most of that time was spent jettisoning themselves from a major label and aiming their sights back at Cuba. It’s where the twin sisters, Naomi Díaz and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz—collectively Ibeyi—shot the album’s new material, in the city where their father found employment as a percussionist. It was reframed as a homecoming of sorts, a trip to find themselves again, but perhaps the most striking departure is the one you’ll encounter long before the opening vocals. On the new project, Ibeyi handed the control of the narrative and the beats to a team of producers they’ve never worked with. The two instrumental focal points that anchored everything they had ever created prior—Díaz’s drum kit and her sister’s piano—are gone. Their absence removes the last thing standing between the listener and two perfectly blended voices.
The project opens with “Olokun,” a stark, devotional plea set at the base of an oceanic abyss, in which a group of voices chants the refrain, “Sawa te late o lokú,” calling out to the water’s iricha; an all-consuming bottom that’s felt somewhere beneath the chest, the middle section dense, the escape into nothing left abruptly bare. As the tempo rises, on “Moshpit,” the electronics are gnashing: heavy distortion drags on either sister’s layered harmonies as they assert, “I’m a god, then I’m nothing/I’m a void, incompleted,” atop a thick rhythm that stutters rather than bobs. Haitian producer Michaël Brun’s expertise on “Aset” anchors down the heavy rhythm and steady bodies within the mix when things get especially synth-driven, while many of their collaborators streamline each song toward a sound familiar from many modern pop and electronic R&B artists, only the sisters’ voices pulling it back.
Two cosmologies coexist across these invocations, distinct lines drawn by how the lyrics position them; the Lucumí energy, “Olokun,” is honored as “the spirit of the ocean” on the title track, whilst Elegguá, the road opener, is addressed in lament on “Baba” with a chorus of “AH Elegguá Baba Elegguá.” As “Baba”’s refrain repeats and morphs into the declaration of “I won’t listen anymore/Trust them anymore,” the music finds clarity of voice with “I’m who I was looking for,” a kind of answered prayer. On “Aset,” Ibeyi look to Egypt, and the sisters narrate an Egyptian myth that begins with “I am Osiris Rising/I kept stealing their knowledge/Now I know divination/As I throw all the shells in,” weaving a tale of rebirth and resurrection by means of shell divination, leading to a powerful resolution in Spanish: “Esto es amor eterno.” Here, the devotion to a deity and a lover converge—the rite allows for more tenderness between breakup narratives than either is accustomed to delivering.
The lyrics spill out line by line on “Offerings.” Where their early works built intricate sonic narratives within coded language, here they “don’t make spells anymore/Now I make offerings,” giving away every piece of themselves, “I guess my heart is an offering,” the gift presented to the same person that fractured it. The terror of the unknown is spoken with bracing honesty on “Fear of change/I’m scared of living, Can you replace this heartbeat that no longer beats?” The wound is ultimately reconciled to one expressed plainly in the album’s final line: “I lived, I broke my heart/I gave it to the gods, baby.”
The collection’s two love songs, sung alternately in French, English, and Spanish, arrive with disparate emotional tonalities. The French and Frenchie of “La tendresse d’un mot,” featuring Sofiane Pamart on piano, express a quiet commitment to being “Si tu changes, je resterai la même,” remaining unchanged while a partner does, the refrain returning to “N’oublie jamais que je reste.” Fame strains this resolve, addressed as “Loin des lights du star système” (“far from the star system’s lights”) as the partners share their struggles.
“Good Life” shifts into Spanish and turns to thanks and gratitude; its bass pulls away so that the sisters’ voices are almost the only thing you can hear as they reflect in Spanish, “Cuando una lagrima me sube/Agradesco todo lo que tuve,” meaning “When a tear rises/I am grateful for all I had,” finding beauty in what was given as, “Encontrar en lo triste algo dulce” (“finding something sweet in what’s sad”).
The moment the refrain’s harmonies build up from line-for-line responses to one another is when it’s at its most crystalline and ethereal. “The Process” delves into the darker aspects of the album’s Spanish-language lyrics, a scene described like the clashing of blades over cut-open hearts: “Corto los corazones/Pico el acero/Machete en el cielo.” The violence resolves into a determined commitment, “I won’t numb the process.”
Trust erodes on “I Know You Loved Me” as “I’m running out of faith trying to hold what fragments my heart” becomes the refrain of faith dissolving, love becoming a reduced “This is just the river, this is not the sea.” The casual dismissal of hurt as just a matter of bad treatment, “You were the first to hurt me bad and call it love,” is stated frankly, and the song remains embedded in low-end hurt, not moving beyond it. “Hurry Hurry,” in contrast, moves to reconcile: They declare, “I’m more in love with you than then,” leading into a bridge alluding to the ultimate aspiration, “Make me your wife/Love in my eyes/I’ll make you smile/Immortalize/So that our love will never die.” Unlike its surrounding pieces, the lyrics on “Hurry HURRY” are plain, a straightforward plea rendered with undeniable intent as it collapses Ibeyi’s multi-lingual, experimental landscape to a solitary, insistent longing.
Underlying these electronic textures is the oldest sound in the record, a sonic touchstone of two sisters speaking into a singular line—as found in the “Olokun” chant, two voices so intertwined they can scarcely be differentiated, from the “Sawa te late o lok” that kickstarts the album to “I was lucky” that brings it to a quiet halt. Producers come and go, but this is the core of Ibeyi’s DNA. As the music locks into an Elegguá call on “Baba,” its bottom is deep and sure, and those two joined voices form the one instrument that they’ve never surrendered.
Great (★★★★☆)
https://www.treblezine.com/ibeyi-offering-review/
By Parker Bennett, July 9, 2026
On their fourth album as Ibeyi, twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz sublimate quite a few times. Depending on the given track, they might be Osiris, king of the Egyptian gods, or a centaur that quickly becomes a dragon, or the living embodiment of a mosh pit. Yet regardless of who or what’s getting channeled, Ibeyi never lose grasp of themselves. Offering embodies its titular practice, taking what has been learned and building something new entirely.
The daughters of acclaimed conguero and former Buena Vista Social Club member Miguel “Angá” Díaz and French-Venezuelan photographer Maya Dagnino, Ibeyi began as a way for the Díaz sisters to explore the musical traditions of their Yoruba and Cuban heritage. Their last full-length offering, 2022’s Spell 31, was a spiritual slice of stripped-back Afro-soul, drawing from the Egyptian Book of the Dead as a means of healing in the wake of COVID-19. Offering is a far denser record by comparison (it also marks Ibeyi’s first independent release since parting ways with XL in 2025), dabbling in distortion and choral-arrangements to create the duo’s vastest and most fully-fleshed work to date.
It’s a change Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi verbalize clearly on the title-track: “I don’t make spells anymore / Now I make offerings.” Said distinction might seem insignificant to the uninitiated, but the spiritual intentionality behind the two practices couldn’t be more different. Spells are appeals to divine powers, asking for change, strength, or whatever else one might require. Offerings, on the other hand, are sacrificial—a return on the spirit-world’s energetic investment.
“Olokun” invokes the name of the Yoruban god of the ocean to pounding drums and increasingly fervent chants. Compare this to Spell 31’s “O Inle,” an acoustic prayer to the god of healing, and the discrepancy is apparent. “Aset” further emphasizes the record’s sonic prowess, creating a haunting atmosphere of incorporeal vocals and minor thirds. While past Ibeyi albums saw the Díaz sisters largely unaccompanied aside from their own instrumentation, Offering brings a coterie of outside producers into the mix (most notably Michaël Brun, known for his work with J Balvin). The resulting music is noticeably bigger, darker, and more focused on the sheer power of the sisters’ voices than ever before.
Exhibit A: the blood-pumping war-cries on “Moshpit.” While pounding 808s definitely add quite a bit of intensity, the track’s true presence comes from its layers of vocal harmonies and choral refrains. Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi’s voices bleed and blend into each other seamlessly, a process as chameleonic as the transformations detailed in the lyrics: “I’m a centaur, I’m a centre / I’m a dragon, you’re on fire.” Their confidence extends past self-assurance, instead stemming from the deepest and most elemental of roots.
This steadfastness wasn’t something Ibeyi found overnight. “Offerings” acknowledges a fear of change, and the unwillingness through which many spiritual discoveries are made: “I guess my heart is an offering… I gave it to the gods, baby.” The sisters’ voices are indistinguishably close-knit, accompanied only by meditative drums and gentle piano chords.
Moments later, they battle self-doubt with far more aggression. “Baba” verbalizes the struggles and second-guessers that continue to threaten their potential (“I won’t listen anymore / Trust them anymore / I was insecure”), before exploding into a Yoruban chant honoring Eleggua, the god of pathways and destiny. The post-chorus renders the powers of said prayer quite clearly: “One thing is for sure / I’m who I was looking for.”
Ultimately, Offering’s greatest drawback is its length. While the brevity of a 30-minute runtime is admirable, the overall potency of the tracklist feels hampered by a lack of development. It’s a great problem for Ibeyi to have—they have enough of a good thing to warrant doing more.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment