She comes from one of the most fertile nations on earth, a green place where life cross-pollinates in every direction, and it shows. Toronto-based Colombian musician Lido Pimienta is not the kind of artist you can describe through simple categories. She operates at the surprising intersection between electronica and Afro-Caribbean rhythms, which she melts and reshapes in gorgeous blurry-bordered hybrids. “Agua”, the first single off her long-awaited sophomore album “La Papessa”, is one of those experiments.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/252089443″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]What an apt title “Agua” has! It’s a water song inside and out. Liquid and slightly blue, it’s driven by synth arpeggios, tiny beats and tinkling percussions that sound like they were played under the surface of the sea. Just like water, it seems to carry a purifying power too. There’s something soothing about it, something lightening about its gliding ways and charmful repetitions, something as fresh as a baptism. Don’t get fooled by its calm attitude though: Lido is not here to sing you to sleep but to wake you up. The song is inhabited by a little paper bird begging for water, a poetic commentary on the mismanagement of hydric resources. That’s what voices like hers, unadultured, delicate, raw, piercing, do best. They fight for justice and flourish in undefined territory. And there’s going to be plenty of that on “La Papessa”, which Lido describes as a tragi-comedia, an album full of love and light and pain and darkness. “Agua” is just its opening act. You better stay tuned.
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