By Santiago Ayerbe @santiagoayerbe
Argentine producer and DJ Heidi Lewandoski releases her debut solo album under the name of Nomadic, with his project Kaleema. We know her because she has worked with Chancha Vía Circuito, touring Europe and Latin America for the last 3 years. He also coordinates the global bass & world music series in Buenos Aires. Mother of God and has participated in compilations for Shika Shika, AYA Records, Métron Musik in London and as editor of a single with the Los Angeles label Waxploitation.
Sensitive to acoustic instruments and also to new digital tools, Kaleema creates environments that transport us to Andean landscapes, journeys between the Caribbean coast and the mountains of the South American continent.
Lewandoski has worked with classical music, jazz, hip hop, and R&B, drawing inspiration from various Latin American regions. From his beginnings in music, he has had a strong classical foundation., as a violin performer and student from the age of 14 until he had performances at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. She also lived in New York, a city that fosters hybrid artistic creation and where musicians from all over the world converge with cutting-edge electronic projects influenced by Andean rhythms, Afro-Latin rhythms, cumbia, and folklore from the Latin American continent. This enormous city is the birthplace of projects such as Ela Minus, Buscabulla, Little Dynasty, and Nickodemus, adding to the growing list of new discoveries in Latin American electronic music. Nicola Cruz, Quechuaboi, Quixiosis, Nicolas Jaar, Bioinmigrant, Helado Negro, Sotomayor or Zurita, to name a few (the latter of great interest to Lewandoski).
From 2009 to 2012, Lewandoski lived in Colombia where he absorbed various rhythms and the rich sound., The percussions and rhythms of the highland and coastal regions of this country are present. We find in it a strong influence of Black culture, where rhythms, drums, dances, and organic sounds are emphasized, transporting us to different jungle and magical places. A follower and also influenced by the projects of Colombian musician Mario Galeano, as he mentioned in an interview with Thump magazine, for whom he conducted, at the beginning of 2017, the Bastards Podcast #013. She demonstrates that every album should be a journey, a selection of moments that, like heartbeats, convey different intensities, sensations, and atmospheres.
The album of Kaleema It is undoubtedly a journey, a ritual of reconnecting with the ancestral, it is full of jungle sounds, organic, introspective landscapes and denotes a cultural transversality, with appropriations of the sound expressions of our continent. We can sense a desire to abandon the European perspective on local expressions, Recovering folk music, indigenous melodies, and rhythms from our regions. Afro-American percussion, Andean textures, flutes mixed with tools from new electronic music, journeys across the land, from the sea to the mountains.
Kaleema presents in 10 tracks an ode to ancestral roots and sounds, where we highlight the collaborations with Chancha Via Circuito opening the album with the track Soul, setting the tone that will develop throughout the album; continuing with Saw Lioness, one of our favorites; Ritual, a path where the only light is the moon; Pendulum with its strong presence in the Andean winds and flutes; Copal which in Nahuatl is resin or incense, next to Lido Pimienta; Saturn return; followed by Mineral, the closely guarded secret of this production; Nomad The title track, which shares the album's name, is one of the most tranquil and relaxing tracks; “Is there love or not?” The million-dollar question with the Argentinian rapper and finally closes with Lotus, a peaceful end, a port we reached after a beautiful journey.
Without a doubt, this is a project worth keeping an eye on. and an album to listen to several times.
