I thought I missed the chance to see Lucrecia Dalt tour the !Ay! album. She’s in the swanky redeveloped King Cross earlier in the year. Here I am at a canal-side warehouse in Hackney on a chilly November evening for some Columbian electronic bolero music.
!Ay! was one of the most acclaimed non-mainstream albums of last year. It won best album in the Wire Magazine and yet by that magazine’s standards was relatively approachable. It’s difficult to put your finger on what the album sounded like. There was a heavy dose of electronics but also wind instruments and rhythms from South America which warmed the sound palette up.
Lyrically, the album is the story of an extraterrestrial who lands in Mallorca and assumes human form and adjusts to life on earth. Dalt became fascinated with the magical underground world of the Iberian island which apparently has unexplained disappearances in the Triangulo Del Silencio. The accompanying videos for the album were shot in Mallorca and centred around her fascination with physical geography, unsurprising when you consider her background.
Lucrecia studied Civil Engineering at Universidad de Medelin but made music whilst she worked and studied. In an interview in the Wire last year she commented:
I was good at maths in school, so I thought I’d explore that part of my brain, and the other part – this artistic part – could be a hobby. I joined an engineering company, and we were doing all these big projects like dams, complex foundations…
I learned a lot, but after a while I thought: I don’t see myself only using this part of my brain!
The Wire Magazine, October 2022, Interview with Rob Turner
As someone who also has a degree in Civil Engineering and finding that the academic side of things alone wasn’t sufficient, I can absolutely identify with this. Writing, playing the guitar – I need to do that to be able to do the other stuff.
She had a bank of barely behaving keyboards, a funky drummer in Alex Lozaro and a dry ice machine to create her magic in autumnal East London. The electronics glitched, sometimes deliberately and often by accident. Lucrecia handled each troublesome synth with grace, humour and serenity. Lozaro was to the right of the stage and was a force of nature. He was surrounded by a mixture of percussion instruments with a rototom and cymbals over his head and was constantly hitting or scraping something, mouth agape with tongue hanging out. It supports my long held theory that drummers should be one of the most prominent band members on a given stage. They’re so much fun to watch.
Dalt’s vocals were often wordless, voice manipulations and textures to support the tropical undertow. It’s the rhythms that make the difference for me – they transport the music from being high quality electronica to something affects the heart and the feet, as well as being cerebral too.
Dalt lives in Berlin at the moment. It appears that these shows draw a line under !Ay! She’s a constant collaborator and David Sylvian appears to be a close friend and supporter. Now wouldn’t some Dalt/Sylvian music be a fascinating next step?
BlackCountryRock 