Adigery, Charlotte & Bolis Pupul - Mainland Madinina

“When you don’t know where to go, go within / My home is my skin.”

These lines, from Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s “Restless”, capture the spirit, drive and power of the duo’s shimmering, riotous album.

After introducing themselves as club provocateurs on their 2022 debut, Topical Dancer—playfully dressing down racists and bigots with an ironic, irreverent gaze—Adigéry and Pupul’s next chapter is both more personal and more profound, exploring grief, parenthood, lineage and colonial history with no less sense of catharsis or needling wit.

Named for the duo’s respective places of origin—mainland China for Pupul and the Caribbean island of Martinique, referred to by its indigenous name Madinina, for Adigéry—Mainland Madinina is a paean to resilience in the face of trauma and one of the most important, striking records of the decade so far, its dance-pop visage concealing ancient histories and contemporary struggles.