For “No tiempo,” Lucrecia Dalt began with two things that seem to belong to different musical worlds: a soft rhythmic pattern inspired by bolero and a voice moving through what she described as a swarm of synthesizers. The piece became one of the starting points for her 2022 album ¡Ay!.
That combination interests me because the electronics do not erase the older rhythmic reference.
Bolero carries a strong history of voice, intimacy and physical rhythm. Synthesizers can easily pull music toward abstraction. Dalt allows both tendencies to remain present.
It is tempting in electronic production to replace an existing form completely: make the rhythm harder, quantise it, modernise the sound.
Another possibility is more subtle.
Keep enough of the original gesture that its memory remains, then change the environment surrounding it.
A traditional rhythm does not have to be sampled literally to survive inside electronic music.
Sometimes its shape is enough.
The listener hears something familiar without being able to point directly at the source.
https://pitchfork.com/news/lucrecia-dalt-announces-new-album-ay-shares-video-for-new-song-watch/
