rvss.eel
Nicola ensambla toda tan buena aquí. No tengo ningunos puntos de comparación porque no conozco nada semejante. Es enérgica, pero tranquila. Es un humor al que volver.
(y como ya dicho, sick windpipe riffs indeed!)
Favorite track: Siku.
Gabriel Santos
Nicola Cruz has expanded his sonic palette even further with this particular album. Perhaps it's the presence of more collaborators than his previous records, but the songs in this particular record have an added breeziness. His best productions yet.
Favorite track: Criançada (con Castello Branco).
An interest in ancestral Latin American cosmology has always run right through the music of Ecuadorian music producer Nicola Cruz. His creative process involves an attentive, careful search for the living roots and rituals that are part of South American identity—its Andean and African origins in particular—valuing its rhythms, its oral traditions, its instruments and the energy they transmit. His first record, Prender el Alma (2015) explored the development of the consciousness and spirituality, and how they connect with music. In Siku, his most recent production, Cruz continues this exploration, expanding his vision towards new stories and other cultures as sources of inspiration. A crucial aspect on this journey is his collaboration with other artists from around the world.
The siku is a wind instrument of Andean origin, highly symbolic in ancestral rituals, made up of two separate, complementary parts, the arca and the ira. It is a representation of duality, an essential element of the indigenous world view, associated with involvement and complementarity, far from the binary thinking typical of western societies. That duality is reflected on this record in the coming together of sounds, whether electronic or organic, past or present, local or global. On Siku, Nicola Cruz combines instruments with symbolic, spiritual connotations, such as the sitar, the siku, and the balafon with hints of electronica. Studies of the samba, cumbia and rhythms of African, Andean and Hindu origin are combined with Cruz’s characteristically unpredictable, mystical style.
credits
released January 25, 2019
Composición, Mezcla y Producción por Nicolá Cruz.
Mastering: Mathieu Savenay
Músicos Participantes: Federico Estevez, Juan Diego Illescas, Julio Vicencio, Mauricio Vicencio, Pablo Vicencio, Esteban Valdivia, Huaira, Sebastian Schmiedl, Daniel Guillermo Vélez Cárdenas, Olivia Garzón, Ivis Flies, Castello Branco, Felipe Torquato, Otavio Bontempo, Francisco Loureiro, Renato Navarro, Alejandra Ortiz, Marcus Berg, Geovanny Vásconez, Juan Posso Cordero, Marcio Pinto.
Dirección de Arte: Orly Anan
Fotografía: Jesus Zabala
Diseño: Ventral is Golden
Far-out exotica from this aptly named group—the kind of music George Jetson might play while unwinding with a martini. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 13, 2022