(2020) Las Lloronas - Soaked


Review:
Las Lloronas are a Brussels-based trio of Sura Solomon, Amber in ‘t Veld and Marieke Werner, their combined backgrounds bringing together several parts of Europe and a bit of the US thrown in for good measure. They also have a shared background in activism and art, something that is a central thread through this album. The opening track, Lagrimas, has the close harmonies right at the outset, the drone underneath is the perfect foil. The voices are waves, gentle though could not be described as lapping; the clarinet picks up this idea as we settle into the gentle swell, and gaze up the sun of the music and the clouds of the words. Their own website describe this album as merging acoustic music with slam poetry, which may be literally true but it comes over as far more subtle. Las Lloronas bring light and comment to our new world, a world of mixed languages and mixed emotions. It is an album of acoustic music and there is poetry, but actually the resultant descriptors are irrelevant. As you listen, you are tempted to fix the music geographically, giving it some aural placement but then it becomes impossible to say that that track is French, or that one is Spanish, or another one is in English. And then you realise that that does not matter. You are confident that the artist knows what they are doing and that you are just having to listen. As for the subject matter, there are hints, a sense that the locus is shifting, the focus moving in and out. The ebb and flow of life, the body, the soul, the relationship within and without, from the female viewpoint: issues of self-image in Bodies; what’s happening to men in Mutation; what lies beyond – Utopia or apocalypse? – in Me. Instrumentally, the use of accordion, guitar and clarinet allows them to flow around Europe, sucking the influences of Moorish Spain and North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, reinforcing the point that origins do not matter, what you care about matters. At times the trio are augmented by the addition of Mateusz Malcharek on double bass, Vaness Diaz Gil on saxophone and Francisco Leal Vázquez on trumpet.





Tracklist:
01 - Làgrimas
02 - Seasick
03 - Bukra
04 - Strange Growth
05 - Mutation
06 - Maria la Portuguesa
07 - La bruja Mariposa
08 - Creature
09 - Bodies
10 - Bien Sages
11 - Me confío
12 - Me
13 - Prayer
14 - Entre la sal


Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk, world
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits