In his forthcoming new album, Reunion’s Insula shares his vision of a Maloya augmented by Afro-futuristic codes
Mickael Gravina aka Insula is a producer, DJ and multidisciplinary artist born on the island of Réunion (Indian Ocean). His work revolves around the notion of hybridity, as expressed in his latest album, TRMBA, released in 2022. Since this release, the producer has been reinterpreting traditional Réunionese music, the maloya, through the prism of electronic music. By revisiting the ternary of the Reunionese genre, extended to the sound worlds of the South American, African, Madagascan and Indo-Oceanic diasporas, Insula offers his vision of a “maloya augmented by digital synthesis with Afro-futuristic codes”.
His new album, Vahoaka, will be released on the Lzrecords label. Conceived as a true continuation of TRMBA, this forthcoming release is a musical excursion from Réunion to Madagascar, infused with contemporary electronic influences and dressed up in futuristic sound design. The album title refers to the Vahoaka people of Madagascar, a ‘people of the sea’ whose ancestral knowledge, beliefs and rituals are linked to death and the genies of the forest and oceans.
Ahead of the release of Vahoaka, the label asked us to broadcast the track ‘Tiny’ (‘small’ in Malagasy), which you can listen to in this article. “The vocals sampled on the track were recorded in a shack in Anivorano, a small village in the north of Madagascar a few kilometres from Diego Suarez. In a makeshift 5m² studio. In this cramped space, a bottle of Dzama rum, a djembe, and a moment captured on the spot. ‘Tiny’, a spark in the darkness of the streets”, the Reunionese label told us about the conception of the track.
Pre-order Vahoaka by Insula on Bandcamp, out on 31 March via Lzrecords.
