albums
Ame Agaru
Balmat Barcelona, Spain – 7 de julio de 2023
Her second album, Ame Agaru, is not necessarily a record of that year, but it is, she says, a response to those life events—a record of grief.
The new album is clearly a continuation of the ambient investigations of Ylia’s debut, but it differs in key ways. Where Dulce Rendición was exploratory and faintly cosmic, Ame Agaru—a Japanese phrase meaning, roughly, “the rain lifts”— captures a melancholy sense of stillness. And where her debut was largely electronic, on the new album, Ylia has folded in a number of acoustic elements, even when they are not recognizable as such. Her partner, Alejandro Lévar, lends fingerpicked acoustic guitar to the glowing dronescapes of “Todos los Cuerpos”; multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Tete Leal adds flutes, clarinet, and soprano saxophone to “Ame Agari”—or “after the rain”—which opens the album with a moment of contemplative calm, the kind that follows an extended deluge.
One track, the dub techno-influenced “Flowers in June,” grew out of Ylia’s live sets, but the rest are the fruit of improvisational sessions at home in Málaga, five minutes from the beach—jamming and then refining, searching for the ideal expression of a feeling as it was first captured. Searching for the spontaneity behind the stillness. In places, Ylia even incorporates piano, an instrument she has played since she was 10, yet has never included on one of her recordings before. For the most part on Ame Agaru, she seeks ways to fuse piano with synthesizers and electronic processes. But on the closing track, “El Único Adiós Posible,” she leaves us alone with the instrument in all its stark, unadorned beauty. It is a profoundly moving conclusion to an album defined by its economy of means and purity of expression: a cycle of life counted out in the passage of storm clouds and clearing skies.
Dulce Redención
24 de noviembre de 2020
Paralaxe Editions is based in Barcelona, and Ylia (a.k.a. Susana Hernández) has long been one of the city’s most well-regarded musicians. A classically trained pianist who came of age DJing breakbeat raves in Andalucia, she easily maneuvers between disparate scenes and styles; she’s as comfortable dropping electro and techno records as she is performing alongside experimental flamenco artist Niño de Elche (she’s a member of his touring band).
Following her appearances on labels such as Lapsus and Hivern Discs, Dulce Rendición is Ylia’s first full-length effort, a cinematic collection of meditative and richly melodic tracks that largely grew out of her intimate live sets. Weaving together analog synths, field recordings and fragments of her own voice, much of the music was directly inspired by her dreams—and more specifically, the seemingly impossible sights and sounds that populated them. Working to recreate their lingering silhouettes in the light of day, Ylia oscillated between moments of deep introspection and playful fantasy as she settled into the hazy space between sleep and consciousness.
Bola del Desierto [AR001-DDNS08]
27 de septiembre de 2018
Darío del Moral and Susana Hernández don’t hail from the desert, but there’s something about the windswept and subtly reverberating sounds they make as Bola del Desierto (which means “tumbleweed” in Spanish) that makes the duo’s chosen moniker feel just about perfect. Although their self-titled debut album is far from aimless, it’s also in no hurry to arrive at its destination; often moving with the urgency of a tortoise shuffling across a sun-soaked landscape, its compositions bathe slowly brewing melodies in a thin layer of fuzz that’s simultaneously both warmly comforting and pleasantly disorienting.
The Bola del Desierto LP was actually created in 2015, while del Moral and Hernández were living together in the Spanish city of Sevilla. The two come from different backgrounds – del Moral is a multi-instrumentalist who’s played in a number of different bands, while Hernández is a classically trained pianist with a long history in electronic music who also DJs and makes music on her own under the names Ylia and Terence – but this record finds them coming together around a remarkably stripped-down approach. Created with nothing but electric guitar, a Juno-106 synthesizer and a delay pedal, the album quite literally consists entirely of first takes. In truth, the music was originally created as part of a long-form improvisational jam; it was only after listening back months later that del Moral and Hernández realized that numerous excerpts from the larger piece also worked on their own as actual songs.
Despite the record’s spontaneous beginnings, Bola del Desierto ultimately helped inspire a couple of entirely new label ventures. The album is being released on vinyl via Animah Records, a new imprint headed up by Hernández (who’s now based in Barcelona) and the mysterious Tony Green Tea. On cassette, the music will appear on Discos de Nuestra Señora en Sevilla, a recently established tape outpost with del Moral at the helm. The two young labels are jointly issuing the digital version of the album, and the music will also be presented live via a series of audio-visual shows featuring the video work of Música Prepost.
Much like its namesake plant, Bola del Desierto has traveled along a circuitous path that was entirely unplanned, yet the record’s unhurried wanderlust is ultimately one of its greatest strengths. It’s often said that a journey can be more important than the destination, and this album has taken the idea a step further, luxuriating in the former while paying no mind to the latter.
Words by: Shawn Reynaldo
singles & remixes
Isolerte (Ylia remix)
Teslaradio, Grains on the floor – 2022
Grains on the Floor lleva a la pista de baile los 11 cortes del álbum GRAINS de Chinowski Garachana aka TESLARADIO (Sevendipia Records 2021) remezclados por 20 productores y 8 visualistas de todo el estado.
Grains ha tenido la capacidad de hacer girar a su alrededor cerca de 50 artistas audiovisuales en sus dos entregas posteriores: GRAINS REMIXES & VISUALS (Oigovisiones 2021) y este trabajo que tienes ahora en tus manos GRAINS ON THE FLOOR (Toroide 2022).
La fuerza centrípeta de Grains, con su drone precioso y poderoso, ha reunido a músicos y productores repartidos por toda nuestra geografía y que, a modo de granos de arena, se han visto atraídos por su enorme magnetismo.
Granos dispersos durante quizás demasiado tiempo, han mutado en una sólida roca y gracias a Grains on the Floor podemos apreciar sus múltiples facetas.
El drone como sonido total, como la nota infinita que alberga dentro de sí todos los géneros, todos los estilos y, cómo no, el baile, ese latido profundo en su interior.
Jordi Giráldez / Comisario y co-productor
Regen
Lapsus Records – 20 de marzo de 2020
«QUINZE» -«fifteen» in Catalan- is the title of the new release from Barcelona’s Lapsus Records. Lapsus celebrates its fifteenth anniversary with the launch of a new compilation comprised of today’s most compelling, experimental and ground-breaking electronic music.
Fifteen unreleased songs from artists that best define the Lapsus sound: Attrakta, Chevel, Gábor Lázár, Gacha Bakradze, Johanna Knutsson, Karen Gwyer, Leif, Machine Woman, Patricia, Pye Corner Audio, RRUCCULLA, Steve Hauschildt, Telefon Tel Aviv, The Belgium and Ylia.
In Orbitae (Ylia remix)
Killin’s Ürcos – 13 de julio de 2018
“The storie tells about the Orbital performance at Benicàssim festival’96, that the indies of that time were shocked so much, they even threw a bottle onto the stage. We were in the same venue, but in 2001, on Sunday, August 5, and when «Belfast» rang, something changed forever in our vision of electronic music”.
Kilin’s Ürcos
‘M25‘is the title of the debut álbum by Killlin’s Ürcos, a tribute to Orbital, probably the electronic music artists more like a band that have ever existed. The album, in double format, incorporates 8 remixes of the song «In Orbitae», one of the two original tracks produced by the Barcelona duo. The second track is the «M25» itself, which gives name to the tribute disc, in reference to the London highway that, in turn, inspired the band honored.
This double vinyl is composed of a 7″ with the two original tracks of Killin’s Ürcos («In Orbitae «and «M25″) and by a 12» with remixes signed by HD Substance, Ylia, Dj Bruce Lee, Wooky, Brunetto, Simone & NRZ, Delusions and Structweird. A walk through very different musical styles, within electronic music, from techno to precious and exquisite electronic, which respond to the particular vision that each artist has of «In Orbitae».
The album will be release at the beginning of 2019 in physical format (vinyl), coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Orbital. The digital publication of this reference by Set Theory Records has been announced in the summer of 2018, coinciding with the performance of Orbital in Barcelona on July 14.
Mondeorgan (Ylia remix)
Begin Again – 10 de diciembre de 2018
Promising/Youngster is the moniker for the Spanish artist Diego Cadierno. This new project arises from the need of rolling out his creations away from (but not far of) the dancefloor. Crunchy bases, fat basses, dreamy pads and analog and digital instrumentation join to form a landscape that could be named as a cross among IDM, Downtempo, Ambient and Shoegaze.
The sound of Begin Again surrounds you in a distant world, it moves you to a place outside our planet Earth and touches you so deeply that you can almost feel the sound as tangible moment. This album contains a getaway of emotions, leaving IDM, melodic breaks, ambient sounds and shoegazers guitars as remote inspirations, perhaps as possible starting points.
Julien Mier continues with the game of connections between the albums of the label by adding his particular and delicate sound with his remix. For this fourth reference, we have the Reykjavik606 duo and the producer Ylia as guest artists who enrich the sound of the album with their contributions.
