DÍA is no less self-reflective than Ela Minus’ breakout debut, 2020’s acts of rebellion, a record whose fragile, blurry intimacy was tied to a year of pandemic isolation. Though it revs up every strain of electronic music the producer and singer-songwriter, born Gabriela Jimeno, likes to toy with – from icy synthpop to sinewy ambient to brazen electroclash – the new album only vows to dig deeper. In hindsight – and by expanding the setting of her creative process to include not only her native Colombia but also the Mojave Desert, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Mexico City, and London – she grew warier of the blind optimism that spreads through the genre and sought to punch through the façade of her own project. “Writing DÍA I thought, ‘Wait, who am I really?’” she said. Definitive or not, the answer it provides is heartfelt, gritty, and self-affirming.
1. ABRIR MONTE
The title of DÍA’s opening track literally translates to “open the mountain,” a phrase that refers to cutting through dense foliage to forge a new path. It’s stuck to Jimeno since childhood, and it’s the perfect metaphor for the instrumental stretch that kicks off the record: the musician came up with the droning chord progression late one night while working from a rented cabin in the mountains of Mexico, colouring it in with wispy noise and static before introducing a pulsing beat. It almost starts to feel like a kind of arrival, but it’s only the view from the top – then she zones in.
2. BROKEN
Jimeno’s lyrics begin, remarkably, with self-reproach of the highest order: “Mother, I’ve been a fool.” Her crime isn’t just killing a man, but merely “acting all cool.” The chirping, gleaming synths soar into one of the album’s catchiest hooks, but unlike contemporaries who are happy making euphoric dance music for broken times, Jimeno remains conflicted, unsure how to center her music around an optimistic refrain. Still, she promises, “I’ll keep writing melodies, to sing away the gloom,” and a simple tarara can hit you like a beam of light.
3. IDOLS
Then it gets dark. There’s an interesting line on ‘BROKEN’ about laughing all the way to (and presumably through) hell, which ‘IDOLS’ both isolates and illustrates: this is the kind of laughter I’m talking about. It’s a sinister dance of self-sabotage and trepidation, harnessing fear over a threat that’s long been looming large. The darkness was already there; this is just what you see with the lights turned on.
4. IDK
Jimeno’s vocals may closely recall the Knife here, distorting and ballooning through the pit of desperation, but her vulnerability follows directly from the previous songs. (“Ugh, fucking light,” you hear her mouth before the first stab of electric guitar.) ‘IDK’ lays her insecurities bare without the nightmarish ambiguity of ‘IDOLS’, while still imagining her floating on the edge of oblivion. “Wonder if I’ll ever/ Introduce myself/ To the others questioning themselves,” she intones, letting the question echo off the shadowy depth.
5. QQQQ
DÍA begins to build itself back up with ‘QQQQ’, a swirling, scintillating house tune that doesn’t overshadow so much as glide beyond Jimeno’s deadpan delivery. “Let the world end,” she sings, and lest her message of defiance gets lost in translation – or worsem mistaken for nihilism – pay attention to the conditional clause: “If it’s going to be like this.” Or just listen to the throbbing beat and rippling electronics, which sound way more like bracing for battle than admitting defeat.
6. I WANT TO BE BETTER
This is probably the first real love song Jimeno has written, disarming the listener just like the phone call that spurred on the lyrics, equal parts conversational and confrontational. It could have been a jarring transition, but Jimeno cleverly threads ‘I WANT TO BE BETTER’ with the previous song by bouncing off the repetition of the word “kid,” while plunging further into electroclash to accentuate the sense of youthfulness. It’s so vibrantly executed that you almost forget what the argument was about, until the singer pleads, forthrightly, “Please just stay a while/ Allow me to reach new heights.” The audience, too, prepares for the climactic ascent.
7. ONWARDS
And it slaps. ‘ONWARDS’ is gothy and fiery, complete with a revved-up beat and an actual hook about self-immolation that, once again, gives the impression of surrender. The song, on the contrary, is as much an invitation to watch the world burn as it is about hope rising from the ashes. Ela Minus plays the role of idol and destructor, if only as a kind of projection: “Are you impressed?” she asks two times in a row. The answer is an easy rhyme.
8. AND
Bridging ‘ONWARDS’ and ‘UPWARDS’, this interlude creates a hellish soundscape out of static, shattered instruments, words mumbled into a tape recorder, and a drone that quickly reaches its boiling point.
9. UPWARDS
The most dynamically triumphant song on the record, ‘UPWARDS’ rips beneath the veil to find that “hell is hereditary” and there’s no choice but the void. The straight-up techno production may make it sound like an enticing place, but Jimeno twists the mind’s self-deceptive strategies into an anthem of self-preservation, delivered softly at first, then with fierce determination. “I’ve got to save myself first,” she declares, and the track is called ‘UPWARDS’ for a reason.
10. COMBAT
More than just hinting at the possibility of rebirth, the final track on DÍA serves as a stunning demonstration. Marking the first time the producer has worked with acoustic instruments and featuring a woodwind arrangement written by Jimeno and performed by Jesse Scheinin, ‘COMBAT’ charts a potential path forward for the Ela Minus project, which keeps reinventing itself. Lyrically, Jimeno flips a popular proverb about birds born in a cage to suggest a different kind of freedom: “We are the birds that only know life inside a cage/ And nothing scares us/ They thought we would forget how to fly/ They thought we wouldn’t dare to take a leap,” she sings in Spanish. Then she lets out a laugh – joke’s on them.