Isol / Zypce: Sima

Isol, an Argentinean, used to sing for the group Entre Rios. Her brother Zypce is a composer. Isol’s singing is smooth and clear, murmurs and croons. Zypce’s instrumental style is sharper, made of splinters, pianos played one key at a time, strokes from a chamber cello, a sampled Irish bagpipe in “Romance Fatal”, electronic blits in “La Culpa”, a windchime, a pranged string, blunted taps of wood, a splatter of crackle as rain falls on a hard surface. Together these complementary opposites make an album that is delicate and surprising. Sima, along with other albums that have been coming out of Argentina over the past few years — Juana Molina’s for instance — argues the existence of an Argentinean pop scene that creates smart and pleasantly eccentric music, perhaps worth looking into if you haven’t already done so.