Remarkable downtempo Andean electronica from one of Ecuador’s biggest musical treasures, Nicola Cruz.
Balancing digital and organic with the essence of the natural sounds from Ecuador, Nicola Cruz’s music invokes the landscapes and rituals of his homeland. A country that is home both to the Andes mountains and the Amazon jungle.
His music is an exploration of ancient mythologies and folkloric traditions in a modern setting. Nicola was born in Limoges, France, to Ecuadorian parents. His upbringing was surrounded by a rich musical education in both indigenous traditions and Western theories and from a young age, he took to percussion.
If you still haven’t heard about him, in spite of our previous articles, here’s your chance to fall in love with this producer, musician, and DJ, who has also opened for the Icelandic electronic duo Kiasmos in Barcelona and Madrid, opened for Nicolas Jaar at Bogota’s Estereo Picnic, and even taken his sound as far as South Korea where he played at Pistil Club.
As for accolades, the adventure has just begun. Nicola’s tracks have been chosen for “Song of the Week” on the French radio station FIP, and on the influential American stations KEXP & KCRW. And his debut album was featured among the 20 best electronic music albums of the year on THUMP (USA).
His secret magical ingredient is “Siku”, also the name of this forthcoming album. The siku is a wind instrument of Andean origin, highly symbolic in ancestral rituals, made up of two separate, complementary parts, the arca and the ira. It is a representation of duality, an essential element of the indigenous world view, associated with involvement and complementarity, far from the binary thinking typical of western societies.
That duality is reflected on this record in the coming together of sounds, whether electronic or organic, past or present, local or global.
*
