A wonderfully eclectic, inventive, darkly ecstatic, introspective yet musically expansive electronica and dance music follow-up to 2020’s debut, Acts of Rebellion, on the theme of light and self-discovery by the Colombian singer-songwriter, musician and producer. Gabriela Jimeno Caldas has a talent for seamless transition between songs, such as between instrumental opener Abrir Monte into the single and former Song of the Day Broken, or the linking soft ripples between IDK and QQQQ, and, as typically as on those two, her sound moves between an intricate, shadowy electronica and energy-filled climactic beats, flitting between English and Spanish.
Her vocal delivery style is intimate, breathy and also menacing, at times echoing Sweden’s Fever Ray, but also subtle and sharply dry, not unlike that of Berlin’s Anna Erhard. She too has a flair for minimal, but memorable lyrical phrasing, strikingly self-detrimental and caustically humorous, such as on Idols: “I took a blow / Straight to the face/ There was blood everywhere / When I opened my eyes / All I saw was people laughing / "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha" / All it took was a little blood / To see what I'm really made of …” Just before that, Broken’s shimmering ecstatic momentum is also matched by wonderfully droll: “I tried to keep up the pretence / Keep doing it for you / Like pulling bones through my skin / How did we end up here / Denying my thoughts like words I have lost,” and “I'll keep writing melodies / To sing away the gloom / That we have succumbed to.”
There’s also a fabulous sequence of titular phrasing and movement from the three tracks Onwards, And, and Upwards, the first of these a pulsating dance track, the second a linking one-minute number that contains electronica’s answer to a boiling kettle, while Upwards jumps into the wonderful declaration: “I'd love to save you / But you've got to save yourself” and “My mind keeps lying to me.” Closing track Combat meanwhile is comparatively musical serene come down, but also beautifully defiant, referencing in Spanish a popular proverb about birds born in a cage, but given a new sense of emancipation. The effect, mixing metaphorical darkness with the light and linking back that album title (“day” in Spanish), dawns again full circle on this fabulously different and original release. Out on Domino Records.
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