How are those New Year’s resolutions going? Is everyone holding up ok? Do you feel like the trope of ‘new year, new me’ is missing a certain danceability? I am all for personal reflection and growth, any time of year, but most of the music that I can think of that best facilitates that is either a bummer, or jazz, or bummer jazz. It is hard to stay motivated if the soundtracks that point you to meaningful change within yourself are kinda quiet and dull. (In my best infomercial voice) What if I told you that you can start your year off with an album that bares an artist’s soul, grapples with growth, change, the end of the world, and you can still shake ass to it?
And so we have DIA, the second full-length album from Columbian-native Ela Minus who played drums in punk bands in Bogota before studying jazz drumming and synthesizers at Berklee. She has played drums for Austra, helped build a synth for Jack White, and has worked with Helado Negro and Little Dragon amongst others. Her first album, 2020’s acts of rebellion (Domino) was composed on a series of synthesizers, drum machines, and sequencers without the use of a computer, a mythical feat for many electronic musicians, these days. She merged danceable beats with punk-in-attitude bass and lyrics which gained her moderately high praise from critics and a small, but loyal fanbase.
DIA developed over three years and three countries, was meticulously edited, and dialed in until it came time to record the lyrics. Ela realized how surface-level her original lyrics had been and wanted to expose more of herself through her music, to offer up vulnerability and self-accountability as well as declarations of self-preservation and emotional weight of living through our own demise as a society, After some rewrites, DIA has become a major point of growth for Ela Minus, not only lyrically, but with arresting pop hooks, grander singing than she has offered to date, and even more complex and idiosyncratic compositions.
Opening track “Abrir Monte” builds slowly, a somber, yet resolute chord progression drones while steadily increasing crackles of noise and distortion build up around you, like sparse trees on the edge of a forest. Once the chirping synths start in, a subdued pulsing rhythm joins anticipating the grandeur to come. When every element is in its place and the beat really starts to mesmerize, it fades away transitioning into “Broken.” ‘Mother I’ve been awful/I let them in even when you said to not listen/went to hell and back, laughed all the way/now I’m broken,’ Ela’s voice rings out over an assortment of twinkling and chirping arpeggios building up to the soaring and mesmerizing hook. Her reverb-heavy vocals floating over a hypnotic house beat like if Yeah Yeah Yeah‘s “Zero” was more complex in every single way. This is a bona fide club banger that seems impossible to not dance to.
This interplay of pop accessibility and willingness to experiment and embrace quirky sounds is evident throughout DIA, though Ela Minus diverse musical experience and taste is equally a player. “Idols” and “IDK” embrace heavier and darker textures. ‘I wonder if I’ll ever introduce myself to the others questioning themselves,’ she sings at the end of “IDK” a drumless buzzsaw synth driven track that ends with bass pulses you can feel in your stomach. These textures handily add to the gravitas of Ela Minus. She can make you dance, but she can also make you think and identify with her own worries and struggles.
“QQQQ” is sing in Spanish over a scaffolding house track demanding the world end now, if it is going to end like this, but it almost serves as an interlude before the second half of the album which seems to have a loose narrative about a relationship. “I Want To Be Better” features the lyric, ‘every piece of me/just wants to show you/that I want to be better/I thought I was better/but I just keep acting like a little kid.’ The word ‘kid’ catapulting the track into another immersive dance hook. This acknowledgement of fault and effort to correct seems to be a plea to the person the song is addressed to, ending on, ‘please just stay around for awhile/allow me to reach new heights/and I’ll show you a love like you have never felt before.’
This moves into a clear trilogy of songs, “Onward”, “And”, and “Upward”. “Onward,” plays like a raved up punk track, pulsing bass, hard hitting drums with its themes of self-immolation, the confession, ‘I’m not afraid to say, I’m terrified I’ll fail,‘ and hook of ‘I set myself on fire,’ seem ready to tear up your local goth night. “And” is a drone and noise interlude that pushes the darkness even further with spoken lyrics in Spanish through a tape recorder that translate to, ‘It’s not about me and I understand that/give you peace/ok…let’s turn this off.’ Which brings us to “Upward” which may be the best song on DIA. Synth pulses and dance beats are adorned with resonance and octave knob flicks while the chorus of, ‘I’d love to save you, but you’ve got to save yourself/I’d love to save you, but I’ve got to save myself, first,‘ in a synthesis of self-help, electronic body music, hardcore techno, and a playful demeanor that Björk would admire. This closing of the mini-song suite is a resounding triumph.
DIA closes with the beautiful crescendo of synths, strings, vocals, and horns that is “Combat”, a slow build into celestial heavens. DIA is a huge step forward for Ela Minus, expanding her sonic palate and performance into songs that are at home at music festivals as they are dark clubs. I wouldn’t have expected to be this enthralled by a record so early in the year, but this is one of the first records this year that deserves wide attention and acclaim. Ela Minus could fashion a 2 hour long experimental synth therapy opera and still make it a dance party where you sweat out your demons on the floor and leave feeling more vulnerable and brave than you did going in, and that is a rare feat.
