By José Gandue @spinning zone
🔥 An artist who sets fire from within
Some time ago I was talking to a Peruvian music entrepreneur who had gone to see the local artist The Fox Zapata to an alternative music venue in the Barranco neighborhood of Lima. He went to the presentation full of curiosity (and also apprehension). because she had read one of my articles about her in Zonagirante.
He, who usually works with very pop artists, very much in line with the commercial formula (if such a thing still exists), He entered the place and saw that there were few people and thought that there was no star to be discovered there.
He stayed to listen for a while and thought that he wouldn't hear the hits he'd come looking for there, the ones that blow up on top 40 radio. I don't know if he thought he was going to find the next Taylor Swift or, at least, the new Thalia.
The next day, while discussing his disappointing experience, She told me that there was nothing there, that nothing was going to happen to her. In the end…
Now settled in Mexico City, seeking new audiences and, definitely, wider possibilities of being served, La Zorra Zapata presents her new album, called Burn or illuminate. She has risked everything, and has decided that music is her calling, and she is receiving the attention she desired.
Obviously, his songs don't get played on commercial radio stations., Those who diabolically repeat mediocre chants, soap opera-like complaints, or low-quality reggaeton babble.
His work, for that type of space, is too experimental, strange, made for complicated people, very different from those who are hooked on the frequencies of their companies.
Fortunately, and increasingly so, There are different audiences, who seek auditory challenges, more interesting music, tunes that captivate because of their difference, artists who offer to explore other kinds of worlds.
🌀 Pop, noise, intensity and freedom
What does La Zorra Zapata's new album sound like? A finely crafted intimacy, based on unconventional sounds. No, don't be mistaken: it's not strange music, like when some artists flirt with it. avant garde And other laboratories of strangeness release their incomprehensible recordings.s pop in its boldest, most intrusive, most personal form.
She starts from a conventional structural base and from there the inquiry begins to measure the limits it can withstand in order to imprint personal, almost always disruptive, marks. She plays with unexpected textures, both analog and electronic, The voices are filled with unexpected reverberations, the percussions become contaminated, and the verses are cut off at the usual moments.
But there is still a Pop substance; that is, it manages to close the stories, it certainly manages to hold the listener's attention. and rather keeps him alert to the resounding surprises that occasionally reach his ears.
What are the best moments of Burn or IlluminateLet's begin with the song that gives the entire album its title: If she only used a guitar it might sound like a beautiful country ballad, but it draws on other instrumental textures and fills the voice with reflections., It darkens it appropriately to become an intimate, endearing recording.
Then, in the next track, Those who hear the sounds may recall environments where they have performed their personal dances, those things that each of us has been able to experience in private spaces, without shame, in front of the mirror. The song is called The Invention, And its secret lies in the insistence of its percussions and the long words that bounce throughout the song.
Sisters, a track that should be the next promotional single from the album, He knows how to combine exaltations and pauses with the immediate passage of seconds, through shifts in tone and changes in atmospheric textures.
🗣️ A unique voice in a saturated landscape
Burn or Illuminate, third full-length album in the career of this Peruvian artist, It is the confirmation of a path towards musical maturity, towards the consolidation of the appropriate noise for the cascade of feelings that Zapata wants to express.
Is this material for the masses? A conservative executive at a multinational record label would certainly be alarmed by this production, but another would understand that the times we live in are much broader than before.,
A large part of the audience seeks to experience challenges, break the routine and listen to less conventional, braver music.
At the moment, La Zorra already has several dates confirmed in different countries of the continent, and surely there will be an audience that celebrates their proposal as it deserves.