When last we heard from Gérald Toto, he was back in a trio with two of his close friends, harmonizing brightly on the album Bondeko. Smash cut to his new video from his latest solo album, Slay, and we see Toto wandering alone across Tunisia’s Tozeur Desert.
As Toto explains, “The desert is an allegorical dream. An inner space where one seems initially lost, without reference or bearings, before finding, within, an anchor point from which to walk. With a heart open to all encounters."
The French-Antillean singer/songwriter's a high, haunting voice plays off the low-end heavy track below it, punctuated by a talking drum. The song swells and dips and shifts slowly, like the dunes. The whole album is supposed “take its listener on an imaginary journey to a world that has time to stop and stare, where the frenetic din of modernity is hushed to a murmur.” This song certainly seems out of time.