On her latest endeavour, Lucrecia Dalt at once returns to her delightfully minimalist, ambient roots while building a cinematic world where power and fragility intertwine. David Sylvian, co-producer and Dalt’s partner, certainly makes his mark on the album, which plays like a window into their relationship. It feels almost too intimate for the world to hear.
The hauntingly cyclical ‘cosa rara’ opens the album, a piece that feels like it could easily slot into the Killing Eve soundtrack. Its title, translated from Spanish as ‘a strange thing’, doesn’t miss the mark. David Sylvian lends a sultry, low-timbre monologue, delivering a quietly confessional refrain: “My body’s smeared in bloody red / she said she loved me / but I don’t trust her yet.” ‘Amorcito Caradura’ follows as an invitation into Dalt’s world – the calm before the storm, an open door for her lover to enter.
Speaking to Treble Zine about the album, Dalt explained: “This time, I wanted to create music that flows cinematically and sets a landscape to tell a love story that flirts with improbability, the miraculous and the mysterious.” That cinematic intent shines in ‘No Death No Danger’, a mantra-like track inspired by the Buddhist principle, “No death, no fear”. Its chorused vocals and hypnotic layering leave the listener fully immersed in Dalt’s quietly unhinged, otherworldly terrain.
On ‘Caes’, we’re welcomed by the deep serenade of Mexican singer Camille Mandoki. Tracks like ‘Agüita Con Sal’ are particularly guarded in tone, and this one closes with a soundbite of raucous laughter that startles just as it fades.
The record shines in its most unabashed erotic moments. ‘Hasta El Final’ provides a swelling orchestral climax (perhaps mimicking the moment of release itself?) while ‘Divina’ sways with a Portishead-like sensuality. “You are the only one I can fool death with,” Dalt confesses directly to Sylvian, and it’s a mood that’s mirrored in Tony Lowe’s striking video of Dalt breaking a mirror in a dimly lit, red-washed room.
‘The Common Reader’, featuring Juana Molina, is one of the album’s rare angsty moments, challenging the listener to unleash their “common reader” – to simply listen and enjoy. ‘Stelliformia’, a weaving of eerie drone soundscapes, brings the record toward its close.
By the end of the album, you’re drifting into slumber, the discordant ‘covenstead blues’ laying your head softly in the ether. It’s a long way from the reserved drone sensibilities of No era solida and Anticlines, but still maintains the same free-spirited experimentalism established during Dalt’s earlier records.
Not ruminating on climate change or geological formations this time around, Dalt instead dives deep into her own idiosyncratic world, in an attempt to make sense of the intangible human condition. To surrender to a lover is to risk danger, but she dissolves into it with grace.
