FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Ela Minus

FEATURE:

Modern-Day Queens

Ela Minus

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PERHAPS an artist…

that some people do not know, I think that Ella Minus is someone everyone should know. An incredible talent whose new album, DÍA, is among the best of this year, I would urge everyone to follow her. I am going to come to a review of that album very soon. I want to drop in a few interviews with Minus before getting there. I am going to start out with an interview from NME. Ella Minus discussed the private reckoning behind her new album. How the Brooklyn-based Colombian had a long road to completion and realisation of DÍA:

“A lengthy process of “letting all the shit come out” followed. “I just needed to get it out of my system and put it in the trash,” Minus contemplates. “I’ve never done therapy, but I imagine it’s something like that.” This private reckoning made her feel that she’d paid more attention to the production than lyrics on her first album. “It felt like time to give it some intention,” she says. Such self-reflection helped Minus to “learn so much” and she “realised the things I was singing about were inside of me”.

‘DÍA’ is a rarity in the dance world: a record that doesn’t shy away from tough subjects and personal stories. “I think we have enough dance music about dancing,“ Minus says vehemently, “I don’t need to give us more of that.” A shining example is ‘IDOLS’, particularly its “very physical” lyrics of “I took a blow, straight to the face, there was blood everywhere, when I opened my eyes”. The first song written for the album, it was inspired by a spiking incident which left her in a London hospital’s intensive care unit. “It happened at the same time as when I got signed, finished mixing my first record and started playing with bigger acts,” she recalls openly.

True to her character, Minus set about turning a negative into a positive. “A lot of things about that experience were hard, but that made it inspiring. It felt like an invitation to look over the life that I was about to start,” she reflects. “It’s so easy for us to follow the paths we are shown without even knowing if that’s what we actually want to do, just because those are the paths that have been drawn for us.” It led her to conclude that “the music industry is kind of a dark place”, yet it’s something “we choose to close our eyes to” because of her love for music.

It’s through music that Minus comes to terms with these thoughts, in particular on ‘I WANT TO BE BETTER’, which she describes as the core of the record – though it almost didn’t make it onto the album. “I thought it was very bad and embarrassing,” she recalls. However, as she kept returning to the song, she was slowly struck by its raw emotion. “There’s this anxiety and intensity, and I wanted the production to self-destruct, then rebuild into the next song, ‘ONWARDS’,” she says, describing the sequence as “redemption in the form of joy”.

As an artist who has always straddled the worlds of pop, club music and electronic experimentalism, many of the tracks on ‘DÍA’ are hook-heavy (particularly the space-shuddering ‘BROKEN’, which conjures the feeling of running down a dark alleyway) but sonically challenging. Though Minus says this balance has never been intentional. “I still try really hard to not rationalise what I’m making while I’m making it,” Minus says. “Except for when the music asks for something very specific, I try to just go with my gut.”

Her instincts have led her to frame ‘DÍA’ as a “call to action”, as Minus describes, much like how her debut was aimed to incite protest and rebellion. “It makes you want to stand up and do shit!” she declares. Though it’s not an easy listen – “It’s angry, there’s a lot going on, but it’s quick and then you wonder what happened?” – she likes that it makes the listener think. “There’s a deep catharsis to it that leaves you energised,” she says.

Having gone through so much to reach a place far beyond contentment, Minus is understandably thankful that ‘DÍA’ is finally out in the world. “It wasn’t easy,” she concludes, describing the entire process of making it as “painful”. “The first album seemed like a walk in the park, so I’m glad this one is now behind me and I can look forward to keep making records”.

I am going to move on to this interview from Juno. Ella Minus discussed what is her most inward-looking album yet. DÍA is one of the best albums of the year for sure. I am quoting interviews that I hope give some background to the album and how it came together. Anyone who has not heard of Ela Minus needs to follow her and experience her music:

“Minus is staying in East Williamsburg in the New York borough of Brooklyn, and inhabiting a rather curious space. She’s staying in the building she called home for seven years – but in a different flat, staying with a neighbour.

“It’s my old neighbourhood so it’s very surreal, as I used to live here for seven years, in this building – so it’s the same but it’s not my apartment.”

New York is the place that feels the most like home, after her native Bogotá of course. She’s just done her first show in the Colombian capital since 2022, a truly emotional experience. “It was incredible,” “I’ve never felt so much love as I did in that room that night.

A launch for the album, it was held in the city’s planetarium no less. “It was the first time I’ve done anything like that I Bogotá – I want to bring music into different spaces.”

Landing five years on from her debut Acts of Rebellion, DÍA was made in multiple locations across several continents in fact, from Colombia and Mexico to New York and LA and numerous other locations in Europe. Not at all by design, she hastens to add.

“It was completely out of necessity. I couldn’t afford rent in New York any more, at the beginning of 2021, so I went back to Columbia for a little bit, but I didn’t have the mindspace to decide where I wanted to move to permanently. 2021 and 2022 were weird – shows kept getting confirmed and then cancelled then confirmed again. It was very difficult to plan. I wanted to move to London but I couldn’t get on a plane because there were no planes, it was a very weird time.

“So then I decided to prioritise making music rather than prioritising where I wanted to live. So I had to go to studios I could use, either places owned by the label or places where I had friends with studios I could borrow.”

Does the enivornment – or in this case, environments – seep into the record at any point, or was she simply locked into the task wherever she was?

“I was very focused on what I was doing,” she says, “but I think inevitably I think the outside world got into the record. I think it’s inevitable, you know. So both. The first track (‘Abrir Monte’) I made literally in the middle of nowhere in Northern Mexico – it was just this cabin, nothing else, just nature. It feels like nature to me. To me it sounds like the birds, the insects, the sound of the night in the countryside”.

The final interview I am coming to is from Rolling Stone. Ella Minus looked inside her most personal album. I am really looking forward t see where she heads next. An astonishing artist that should be on everyone else’s radar. Make sure that you do not miss out on Ela Minus and her extraordinary music:

“Your career path is very interesting. You came to the United States for music school and then you started designing your own synthesizers. What piqued your interest in electronic music?

I grew up playing drums in a punk band so I like that spirit of aggressive, loud music. Maybe it was my first influence, but it’s hard for me to say. I wasn’t really exposed to a lot of live music other than rock growing up in Colombia. There weren’t really any non-Colombian bands or DJs touring. So when I moved to the States for college, that was my first exposure to electronic music. And it was there that I made the connection that a lot of the bands I loved as a teenager, like Radiohead and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, used synthesizers — I thought they were effects on the guitars or something, I didn’t know. As soon as I made that connection, it kind of opened this door that I eagerly dove through.

But it wasn’t as simple as you hearing Bjork’s Vespertine. What motivated you to pursue this style full-time?
I was a drummer from nine years old until I was eighteen. The moment I left Colombia, I was over rock music, to be honest. I moved to college and started studying jazz and synthesizers and music synthesis. I was exposed to all of this new music, a lot of Bjork and James Blake, Four Tet, Caribou. I started listening to things I wanted to make for myself. I tried to explain it to my bandmates from my position as the drummer, but I quickly realized that it was not going to go anywhere — I needed to do it by myself. And it just felt like I arrived at a point where I had more technical knowledge and had kind of taught myself how to produce. It felt easier to teach myself how to produce and make music on my own than trying to explain to these other boys what I’m hearing in my head, which is why I made my first EP. I had this sound in my head, and I just needed to get it out somehow.

Part of your curriculum involved studying jazz music. Does jazz inform a lot of the music you’re making as Ela Minus?

Definitely a lot. I still listen to the music of my drum teacher, Terri Lynn Carrington. She was my private instructor for four years in drums, so I think a lot about her teachings. Everything she taught me about drums kind of applies to all aspects of music-making. And I keep going back to the classics, a lot of Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey.

How has your production process changed since your early EPs? Those early records [First Words and Kiddo] quickly establish your signature sound. How much do you focus on developing your voice, or is your music really an extension of experience and access to different production techniques?

I think I definitely have found my voice, but I keep looking to develop as a musician. Those early EPs intentionally had a very specific sound. I wanted to make something that sounded unique, which was really the kernel of the idea to start a solo project. I was tired of not really being excited by a lot of artists, realizing that a lot of music was starting to sound the same. I didn’t have any budget, but I also didn’t want one. I was trying to make electronic music from a perspective of the life of a jazz or punk band, where each synthesizer was like its own band member. “Do I have a synthesizer for all the drums? One for all the basses? One for all the chords?” I wanted to take this band of synths, and focused on working for one week, and then whatever I record would go on YouTube. I was trying to be coherent and cohesive with what I was doing — making music which I could perform live as-is. This new album is the first time where I’ve focused on not restricting myself and using whatever instruments that I want. It’s growth by trusting that I can work in different ways.

One thing that’s changed since you began your career 10 years ago is the amount of media attention for Latina electronic artists operating in a range of styles, from Sofia Kourtesis to someone like Elysia Crampton (Chuquimamani-Condori) who makes dense underground DJ music. How do you think about your place in the music scene as it relates to your own identity?

Of course, it’s impossible to get away from it. I’ve learned identity is something we all need as humans, and that we look for in the world, to try to understand and to grasp things. I don’t think it’s a negative thing. I agree that the names you mentioned make music different from mine, but so do, you know, Caribou and Floating Points. I feel like I’m kind of touching a lot of worlds, like I’m Latina and I’m Colombian which are things that I am very proud of and part of my identity as a human being. I’m grouped into many different scenes, but I don’t really think I’m 100 percent a part of any of them. I can never be a synth-pop American singer because I’m not American. I can’t do what Sofia Kourtesis does because I’m not making club music. Sitting in-between all these worlds and forging my identity from this unique combination is a big driver personally.

Your lyrics are mostly written in English. Is that your preference when writing song lyrics or is that related to most of your influences being sung in English?

I think both. I’m very committed to trying to be as honest and intuitive as I can with my music. Usually when I start writing something, I hear a vocal melody, and usually it comes already with a sentence, like lyrics, in either English or Spanish. I try to stick to that language and develop the idea through improvisation. It kind of trickles down from one single idea, including the choice of language, so I don’t try to rationalize it. But I also think it has to do with the fact that most of the music I consume, growing up and still to this day, is in English. I’ve been living in English-speaking places for most of my adulthood. English and Spanish are very different languages but it’s helpful to be able to choose depending on how I want to express my ideas.

I often think of musicians that aren’t Latin American, who sing in English when it’s not their native language, and how it doesn’t come with the same controversy. Like Bjork, for example, I’ve never really seen any conversation about why she sings in English, but it’s evidently not her native tongue. Daft Punk and Phoenix too, many global north musicians that aren’t native English speakers. But for some reason, it’s only a topic when it’s Latino musicians. I think that’s interesting.

Listening to your latest album, DIA, there appears to be a major post-punk influence to a lot of tracks, like early Suicide records, whereas Acts of Rebellion had more of an anthemic quality.

They’re different sounding albums, but you can hear the same artist behind them. The difference is in how they reflect the five years in-between making each album. The sounds on DIA originate from working in a lot of different places instead of at home — lots of change of scenery. I was less focused on self-made rules as far as production or writing. I felt freer to do whatever I wanted. I don’t consider DIA a better record by any means, but as a musician, I feel like I got better at what I do.

Acts of Rebellion gained a bit of a reputation as an agit-pop album, one very heavy in political sentiment. DIA, on the other hand, sounds like an entirely personal work by comparison.

Everything is political. You can see them as two sides of the same coin. Just one is dealing with certain topics outwardly, and the other one is dealing with the same topics inwardly”.

I am ending with a review from CLASH of DÍA. I think I first heard her music a couple of years ago. I recognised a distinct and unique artist the minute I heard Ela Minus. I do hope that this feature has gone so way to convince anyone who is not that familiar with Minus to check out her music and do some investigation:

“Opening up is never easy – especially for artists. But more often than not, those who have the capacity to scrutinise and share their most personal facets, are those who resonate with listeners on a level of authenticity that matters most. Colombian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, Ela Minus, reckons with this on her second album, ‘DÍA’. Looking inward to look outward, she spent three years creating her new material before deciding that her lyrics didn’t dig deep enough. She delved into fresh territory, both physically and internally, gathering snippets of self-discovery and weighing up new words to illustrate what she’d uncovered. The result is a broad body of work which shines as a forward-looking follow up to her acclaimed 2020 debut, ‘acts of rebellion’.

‘COMBAT’, the album’s closing track, was the first album taster shared in June last year. Its sombre, reflective tone may have come as a surprise to fans initially. But within the context of the album, it offers the perfect introduction. Its lyrics sung in Spanish are a plea to never giving up, and its simple, effective music video shows Minus at her most vulnerable yet, looking directly down the camera lens, a glint of a tear in her eyes, laying bare her emotions. ‘BROKEN’ leans further into this vulnerability. Mentioning in a press release that she felt fine before writing the song, Minus soon realised she wasn’t. Its lyrics tackle an enduring of suffering lingering beneath the surface, hidden in plain sight: “I tried to keep up the pretence / Keep doing it for you / Like pulling bones through my skin / How did we end up here?”

Sonically, ‘DÍA’ picks up from where ‘acts of rebellion’ left off. Occasionally looking back to the intensity of late-night reverie on her debut, her new album’s expansive feel smashes through the club ceiling towards new possibilities. The production is impeccable throughout; ‘QQQQ’ blends syncopated Latin rhythms with quirky layered synths, ‘IDOLS’ puts ominous reverbs to the fore for a dark, edgy feel, while the three-track segue (‘ONWARDS, ‘AND’, ‘UPWARDS’) culminates in the best of Minus’ impeccable abilities as a producer. Catchy vocal melodies, meticulously detailed sonics, bounds of relentless energy – it’s as though the body heat of the dancefloor pours out of the music.

Minus’ new album succeeds with its M.O. In terms of artistry, it’s similar to the work of Kelly Lee Owens, blending accessible pop tendencies with techno infused experimental flair. Yet, and perhaps more importantly, Minus has said exactly what she wanted to say, in the exactly the way she wanted to say it on DÍA. She’s patiently pored over it, unafraid to go back and change things and choosing introspectiveness as her means for moving forward.

Less an act of rebellion, more an act of honesty. It was worth the wait.

8/10”.

I shall leave it there. One of the most talent and innovative artists in Dance, do go and seek her out. Even if there has been a shift inwards from her 2020 debut, Act of Rebellion to her new album, this has been a natural and needed evolution. One that takes her sound and lyrics in a new direction. It is clear that this artist has…