The wait is over. Lucrecia Dalt’s ¡Ay!, released today on RVNG Intl., shoots to the top of my favorite releases of 2022 like a rocket, extending well beyond and into the stars.
Dripping with tropical goodness, ¡Ay! mines other fertile fields as well, blending Dalt’s experimental sounds with jazz, noise, and more all in support of a very heady tale of an alien visitor and alienation.
From the Bandcamp album notes:
Lucrecia Dalt channels sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!, where the sound and syncopation of tropical music encounter adventurous impulse, lush instrumentation, and metaphysical sci-fi meditations in an exclamation of liminal delight. In sound and spirit, ¡Ay! is a heliacal exploration of native place and environmental tuning, where Dalt reverses the spell of temporal containment. Through the spiraling tendencies of time and topography, Lucrecia has arrived where she began.
I had to look up “heliacal” and I’m still not sure exactly what it means. Dalt was born in Colombia where she worked as a geotechnical engineer before focusing on music but ¡Ay! is not contained by geography or genre as it extends beyond place and explodes fixed notions of style to explore with complete abandon. ¡Ay! is new in every sense of the word, yet it’s as infectious and joyful as any music I’ve heard. The entire record feels like a celebration—of life, of ideas, of exploration.
My LP is on the way, ¡Ay! is so LP-worthy I may have to buy more as gifts, but in the mean time ¡Ay! will be playing in the Barn to remind me that life can be unexpected and delightful, acting as a heliacal rising signaling a new dawn and a new day ripe with possibility.