The duvet artwork for Ela Minus’ new album, DÍA.
Alvaro Arisó/Pitch Excellent PR
cover caption
toggle caption
Alvaro Arisó/Pitch Excellent PR
Quite a lot of music today is created with none devices; only one particular person and a laptop computer.
Colombian artist Ela Minus is attempting to deliver the human contact to a largely digital music scene.
“I really studied coding for a very long time,” Minus informed Morning Version host A Martinez. “I began getting very, very used to the sound of laptops. So I used to be simply on the lookout for a distinct sound, and I discovered {hardware} synthesizers, which means there’s an precise instrument – separate from a pc – that has piano keys.”
Minus – whose actual identify is Gabriela Jimeno Caldas – says she’s been pressured to surrender the cumbersome, analog synthesizers. “If I am utterly sincere, it is principally come from male engineers which are, like, ‘Why are you carrying all of this round? You [should] simply get a laptop computer.’ My query is all the time: Why?” she mentioned. “The reply has by no means been convincing sufficient.”
Ela Minus grew up in Bogotá, the place she performed drums in a punk band. She then got here to Boston’s Berklee School of Music to check percussion, however she discovered her true inspiration in that metropolis’s dance golf equipment.
Ela Minus’s new album is known as DÍA and was launched earlier this month. Musically, its sounds are wealthy and layered; the beats are fierce and joyous. However lyrically, Minus leans towards melancholy, describing the mixture as “dancing and crying.”
“My music has numerous juxtaposition. I am the kind of individual that – whenever you inform me one thing actually unhappy, I chortle. In all probability out of nervousness, in all probability out of not figuring out find out how to react.”
She says that is gotten her into numerous bother with vital others or mates.
“The particular person will get madder, after which I am laughing extra, after which they simply preserve getting extra offended. I imply, it is not nice. I’ve gotten higher.” It even impressed her to jot down considered one of her new songs, “I Need To Be Higher.”
Minus is on tour together with her new album, with varied dates in Europe earlier than returning to the U.S. in March.
