When Khalab and Baba Sissoko first recorded together in 2015, they produced something definitive: a record where electronics and griot tradition achieved genuine synthesis rather than polite cohabitation. Not layered genres maintaining separate identities, but two forms evolving into something singular. "Tata" took Track of the Year at the 2016 Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards, found champions in Laurent Garnier, Ben UFO, Matthew Dear, Bonobo, and many others — but more significantly, it established a working method built to last. 
Eleven years on, they return with Foli Bah on Hyperjazz Records.


Theirs is a relationship built on trust. Khalab constructs structures that don't develop linearly but spiral inward — loops that reveal something new with each rotation, tightening until the listener stops resisting and surrenders. Sonic architectures that don't expand outward but deepen over time, layering toward saturation. Baba Sissoko inhabits these structures with instruments from Malian tradition, not as ornamentation but as load-bearing elements: the tradition becomes structure, not decoration. Electronics and griot practice begin speaking the same language.


Foli Bah carries weight beyond sound. The five tracks bear Bambara titles invoking universal themes: power as self-determination, destiny that overturns judgment, coexistence as political and cultural choice, possibility that remains open as long as there is life, and trust as the foundation of relationships. These aren't narrative songs but states of being enacted through tension between Khalab's obsessive repetition and Baba's improvisational presence. The trust between the two musicians mirrors that between communities who choose to remain united; the hypnotic repetition of the loops is the same persistence that keeps the possibility of change open.