Approaching a decade as a band, sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz still have Ibeyi at the top of mind just about all the time. And because their mother is one of their managers, that means that even Christmas dinner is a planning session.

“There is absolutely no line,” Lisa-Kaindé Diaz said.

It’s an obsession for all three of them, Lisa-Kaindé explained in a recent video call ahead of the Ibeyi’s first U.S. tour in years. It’s what she and Naomi live for. They’re constantly trying to find a balance, Naomi added, but it’s hard because they don’t get to punch out at 5 and leave their jobs behind.

“The only time I don’t think about Ibeyi is when I’m asleep. No, when I’m sleeping, I think it,” Lisa-Kaindé said. “When I’m meditating, still the thought comes in, and I have to fight it back. It’s when I’m making love, and sometimes when I’m in nature and I’m contemplating how beautiful the world is.”

The sisters, now 28, have had a lot of time to think about how far they’ve come since their U.S. tour, which was originally scheduled for last fall, was postponed to this spring. It’s been 10 months since they released their third album, Spell 31.

They broke out in a big way with their 2015 self-titled debut, blending French and Afro-Caribbean elements—the band name means “twins” in the Yoruba (West African) language—with jazz, electronica, soul, pop and hip-hop. The French Cuban twins, daughters of the late, acclaimed Cuban percussionist Anga Díaz (Irakere, Buena Vista Social Club) sing in English, French, Spanish and Yoruba. Taking after their father, Naomi plays the cajón, as well as the Batá drum.

XL Records studio head Richard Russell signed Ibeyi to his label and has personally been producing their records, which include 2017’s ASH. Those not already in the know likely discovered the Diaz sisters when they made an appearance in Beyonce’s “Lemonade” film.

Since releasing ASH, Lisa-Kaindé moved to London, while Naomi has remained in Paris. But while they’re separated by a one-and-a-half-hour flight, they remain as close as ever.

“I’ve never felt like Paris was my place. I didn’t want to live there full time,” Lisa-Kaindé said. “When I went to London, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s here! This is great.’”

London was already where Ibeyi recorded and represents the music-making process to the duo. But also, she said, it created a healthy distance for the sisters who spend so much of their time together on tour or in the studio. Now, it’s more fun whenever they travel to each other’s cities.

“We’re more together than apart, and so it kind of allowed us to miss each other, allowed us to be independent from each other,” Lisa-Kaindé said. “It affected the way we make music because … we both grow apart and then bring it together. We both grow and create, and then meet, and that’s when the intense manifestation of the album [was] happening.”

Death has always been a part of Ibeyi’s music. The debut album dealt with the loss of the twins’ father as well as their older sister from cancer. That remains the case; even the album title is a reference to a passage from the Egyptian funereal “Book of the Dead.” Lisa-Kaindé said it’s always in the back of their minds because losing loved ones is a big part of their experience.

“Our connection to our dad is through … making music, through performing,” she said. “When we sing, we always think about him. He’s always present.”

But she avoided terminology like “mortality,” instead preferring to call it “humanness.”

“It’s the messy life that we all live; it’s the pain and suffering, but turned into something beautiful. It’s also the joy and the celebration of what we have,” she added. “Naomi says that her one passion is psychology and studying humans. We do that through our songs, too. We try to understand ourselves more, try to study our emotions more.”

The title itself was found during their first day in the studio, as Ibeyi was trying to understand “Made of Gold,” the only song on the album that the Diaz sisters wrote while they were in the studio. “Made of Gold” was a love song at first, but it wasn’t working as such, they said.

“Richard always has books that he reads or that he wants to read, or that people offer him. ‘The Book [of the Dead’] was there on the floor. We don’t know why,” Naomi said.

Lisa-Kaindé called it the “magic of creation.” Russell directed them to open the book to a random page, and they opened it to “Spell 31.” She spoke the words from memory:

“‘Oh, you with the spine, who would work your mouth against this magic of mine. It has been handed down in an unbroken line. The sky encloses the stars, and I enclose magic.’”

“Suddenly I felt not afraid anymore. I felt guided,” she said. “I felt like ‘Made of Gold’ is about the ancestors and the connection with that power, that knowledge within our own body, and that we all have.”

 

They wrote the words on the studio’s whiteboard, and that was that. The decision was made.

The album is 10 tracks and only about 26 minutes long, including a re-imagining of punk band Black Flag’s “Rise Above.” At the time of this interview in February, the sisters had yet to listen to the original. Lisa-Kaindé said this is an attempt to protect their own version as long as possible, but that she has been listening to other Black Flag songs.

“Richard had written the lyrics on the whiteboard. I didn’t know Black Flag before. He was like, ‘What do you think about those lyrics?’” Naomi said.

Their recording, with Trinidad-born rapper Berwyn, sounds nothing like the original. Russell looped a sample of the sisters’ father’s drumming on CDJ turntables while Naomi added bass. Lisa-Kaindé began singing the words written up on the board. Berwyn’s verse references George Floyd’s murder by police. The Black Flag original is two and a half minutes long. The Ibeyi version added a full minute, making it the longest song on the album.

“We started jamming, and we made this song in 10 minutes,” Naomi said. Added Lisa-Kaindé: “And suddenly the vibe became like … rage.”

Spell 31 also includes the echoey and hazy “Lavender & Red Roses,” featuring Jorja Smith, and sisterhood ode “Sister 2 Sister.” While the album flows from start to finish with no resistance, each of the songs has a unique sound and feel. Making individual songs was an important goal to Naomi.

“She came to the studio and said, ‘I don’t want to make an album. I want to make singles that stand on their own,’” Lisa-Kaindé said. “And I think that’s why this is one of the best albums we’ve made because they are so strong individually, and they have their own personality. I think the album is a real journey.”

Ibeyi followed up the album last fall with single “Juice of Mandarins,” a love song written at the same time as the rest of Spell 31, but held back on adding it to the album.

“When we did the [track] list for the album, every time we were putting one out or putting one in it, it felt less strong,” Naomi said. “We felt like these 10 songs were really good together, and that was a whole body of work.”

There are more songs from those sessions, and the sisters have continued writing since then, recording songs last summer with other producers in Los Angeles. More studio time was planned for February in London. These songs expand their sound even further into different genres, she added. They plan to release them as singles rather than planning their next album.

“What’s interesting with Ibeyi is that we can do pretty much everything,” Naomi said.

On their upcoming U.S. tour, Ibeyi will be playing with a full band for the first time. Previous appearances, including a breakout set at 2016’s Outside Lands, included just Lisa-Kaindé singing and playing piano, and Naomi on percussion instruments. That means the older songs have new arrangements, different from what the sisters have been playing for 10 years.

Because they’ll have backing musicians, they’re able to improvise on stage, something they cannot do when it’s just the two of them, Lisa-Kaindé said. Naomi added that she wanted to incorporate more of a rock and roll and hip-hop sound on stage, and that it will be bigger than in the past.

“We want to bring it even further and just be balls of energy and take people into our own world,” Lisa-Kaindé said. “The idea is to take you through a whole journey of different emotions whether it’s dancing, whether it’s crying, whether it’s feeling the rage leave your body—whatever those emotions are, we want to take you through a journey of all of those.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.