Lucrecia Dalt Beckons Traditions Across Oceans on ‘¡Ay!’

No two Lucrecia Dalt albums are the same. The tight, looped glossolalia of 2020’s somewhat Ghedalia Tezartes-inspired No Era Solida feels crisp next to the seemingly amorphous blobs of sonic ripples sprinkled throughout Ou’s four-track sprawl. One could be forgiven for not hearing an undercurrent of spaced-out South American rhythms burbling beneath Anticlines‘ other planetary squelches, synthesized bleeps, and out-of-body spoken word.

On that 2018 release, it’s as if Dalt’s time as a geotechnical engineer influenced her to create the sounds of what soil and rock on other planets might sound like. The Colombian-born, Berlin-based artist’s concentration on small sound bursts has more recently paved the way for her soundtrack work on HBO’s horror-comedy series The Baby and sci-fi horror film The Seed. Soundtrack or otherwise, these records have a distant kinship with Eliane Radigue, Beatriz Ferreyra, or perhaps Dick Raaijmakers.

You could follow Dalt’s recordings over the last decade and see a pattern even as her approach shifted with each release. However, a vast knowledge of every sound she’s released would in no way prepare you for ¡Ay! This album, her third for RVNG Intl, not only blends Dalt’s electronics with congos, clarinet, flute, trumpet, and double bass, it sounds like her first blatant turn at taking up the rhythms and vocal phrasing of her Colombian homeland. Yet, a cumbia record it’s not. Instead, it’s a story about an extraterrestrial being named Preta confronting earthly emotions, as well as the concept of mortality over futuristic stabs at sons and boleros seemingly crafted in space.

“No Tiempo” begins with a tear-inducing soap opera lowery organ that fades as clarinet, flute, and synth-chimes set up the tempo for Dalt’s Spanish vocal watercolors. There’s even a video to the song that features Dalt as Preta licking a rock as a way to taste the geological past. If this concept sounds insane, it’s also a way for an experimental, forward-thinking artist like Dalt to engage with the music of her youth, which includes rhythms going back decades, ultimately connecting to the African roots of coastal Colombia’s culture. It also makes from some beautiful, engaging music, an obvious entry point for anyone only now exploring her work. Like her other albums, what you know about the concepts that drive ¡Ay! may not matter a whiff, as the sonic territory she so deftly explores speaks its own language.

A case in point here is “Dicen”, a 21st-century son based on a throbbing synth pulse, a muted trumpet, and percussion seemingly played on the walls of a cave. Dalt’s vocals swim atop the groove, at one point clamping down on the music, only to let it all re-emerge before the song shuts down. “La Desmesura” uses a dual trumpet and clarinet line to invoke after-hours-club haze; the percussion and swirls of synths serve to make the track slightly seedy, a kind of ET noir.  

Dalt once stated in an interview that attending concerts in Colombia made her realize that “the western idea of going to see your idols at teenage age wasn’t a possibility for [her] until [she] moved to Europe in 2005”. It was only there that she encountered shows featuring the artists that truly spoke to her. As a result, ¡Ay! tugs the music and language of Colombia out of its natural space, allowing Dalt to beckon traditions across oceans and, along the way, provide established melodies and rhythms for new spaces to inhabit.