Balancing defiance with hope, Ibeyi’s 2nd album Ash is an unambiguously successful return for the duo. Their explorations of music and culture’s interplay continue on an album that has the power to both purify and galvanise.

As in their first release Ibeyi, the twins’ Afro-cuban heritage shines strong, with batá drumming and the Nigerian Yoruba dialect employed throughout. However, while the first sought out and examined this identity, Ash finds more of its themes in the sisters’ shared experiences of the present day: opening track ‘I Carried This For Years’, featuring other-wordly samples from a bulgarian choir, establishes the tone as deeply personal and experiential, set to a confrontational sound which hints at the political posture of the album.

Ash is very minimally put together, with songs often formed just from percussion, a synth bassline, and vocals. A lot of the emphasis falls on the production, a lot of which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Kendrick album. It’s used sparingly to highlight the grace and power of the sisters’ voices, and can be brittle or fluid, as befits the subject: from the smooth hamonies and electric piano of the conciliatory ‘Waves’, the the almost cultish reiterations of ‘Deathless’, supported by the harsh melodic refrain of Kamasi Washington’s sax.

A strong resistance dialectic pervades this song, as it does the album. ‘Deathless’ was written about one sisters’ racially-aggravated arrest by french police, and has the unmistakably empowering air of a protest song. ‘No Man Is Big Enough For My Arms’, which samples a speech on feminism from Michelle Obama, draws on the twins’ experiences as women of colour: “the measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls” is looped over and over. While at times angry, on the whole these points of friction are positive and affirming – never plaintive or despairing.

Their use of French, English and Yoruban, and for the the first time, Spanish lyrics puts the theme of transmission – both political and cultural – at the centre of the album. It’s concerned not only with the ideas we confront, but the ideas we celebrate and choose to hand down, which gives the album a resolved, conciliatory feel. It all comes to a head in the the gorgeous 7-minute centrepiece ‘Transmission’, with its refrain “we sing and our tears dry / facing a clear sky” repeated until it takes on a cathartic release. Adding to the sense of heritage, it also contains a sample from the diary of Frida Kahlo read by their own mother: “Feet, what do I need them for / when I have wings to fly.” It follows the pattern of so many of their songs, where an image or idea is seized upon and repeated to the point of transcendence.

Final – and title – track ‘Ash’ is a micro-representation of the whole album, and encapsulates the binaries within it. It’s at the same time an ominous warning, a call to action, and a reminder of renewal, that life marches on. Ashes may hold connotations of ruin and destruction, but conversely, as the sisters say of the album: “We can do positive things with ashes. There’s still hope.”

Ben Noble

Website: ibeyi.fr