Happy Lunar New Year!
Seeing as it’s been over a month since my last piece, I must humbly confess that this newsletter is clearly NOT biweekly - it has a life of its own and is timeless and sporadic, like a mushroom <3
Back in December, I wrote about alchemy, transmuting energy and reconnecting with that glittering Tetris of tools and resources we have available to us at any given moment. In all honesty, I was reflecting ahead of my time, as it took me quite a while to truly embody this mindset. I guess writing will always be a form of wishful thinking. Words = spells, baby!
I’m not going to lie, being thrown back into the cement-coloured skies and boarded-up streets of Toronto after being home for five weeks felt pretty turbulent. For the first time in a decade, I found myself examining that bittersweet, growing pang that this is not my land, that I will perhaps never truly be at peace here and that I miss my family and friends a thousand times more than I have allowed myself to admit. It’s like the air here has slowly been making me sick, and I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t, and especially exhausted of creating new spaces to fill the void when it doesn’t come from the heart.
I yearn to flow, steady as the waterfall that slowly erodes the stone, patiently dissolving the “unmovable”.
Being in Argentina breathed life into my soul in a way I didn’t know I needed. It reminded me that el camino se hace al andar, that we must trust our path so as to not trip over our roots and that sometimes we must take a lancha colectivo to the river and remember that there are more stars in the sky that we can ever fathom. That’s where I found myself during my last days in Buenos Aires: with friends - old and new - and some mushroom medicine that made us laugh for what must have been about 24 hours, non stop. How I love Argentinean women, how I love us! The nonchalant mischief. The playful nibbling along the edges of femininity. The unwavering stance in the face of patriarchal absurdity, spitting out seeds of utter softness and absolute strength.
It is within this liminal space, in this vibrational core between opposites that we find the High Priestess - the mujer sabia who takes no bullshit and sees right through it all.
🌀🌀🌀 She who goes within to never be without. 🌀🌀🌀
I’ve been teaching myself music production for the past year, and have recently decided to go back to the basics to study music theory and composition and officially graduate from GarageBand to Ableton Live. This shit is WILD, friends - it’s an entire WORLD and I’m OBSESSED. Learning how to make a beat from scratch, how to harmonize a melody, how to turn an audio recording into a MIDI clip and back again is my new love language and there is no going back. Conjuring lyrics and chords out of raw emotion is pure witchcraft, and each time I plug my keyboard in, I imagine the High Priestess watching intently over my shoulders and whispering sweet nothings of encouragement and tough love: step into the shadows, keep trudging through the muck, get through, get through.
It feels especially ironic because I’ve experienced so many technological failures since October - faulty cables, incompatible software, erroneous updates. Literally all the demos I made got corrupted, which I’m now accepting is a blessing in disguise - an opportunity to start fresh, to be aware of each sound and intentional of where they’re coming from. To embody the why as much as the how.
In honour of this, I hosted a lil jam session at my place last week with a fellow Gemini artist to see how loud we could get without neighbours complaining (Spoiler: they didn’t!). There’s a certain magic to free styling, to letting words and notes pour out of you at their will - almost like pulling on the loose string of an unraveling blanket, only to find an even warmer one on the other end. Dare I say it’s… transcendental? I liken it to the indescribable vibration of 46 million people chanting and dancing to the same beat when Argentina won the World Cup.
Duuuude, we really are all connected. 🤙
On a final note… I’ve made an effort to support more local musician friends this 2023 (shout out Moonbean, Javi Goodnite and all the lovely artists I’ve met working at Sofar), and I can’t help but go into a spiral and wonder why is anything with cables considered “masculine”? Look at our veins! Tree roots! It’s just pure currents of energy! I could ramble on about this and why I want more women playing around with loop pedals (like Tash Sultana’s studio version of Gemini), and arpeggiators (like this brilliant film)... but I leave you with some goodies below and an honest request as we swirl and dance our way through Aquarius szn: Send me your demos. Let’s jam. ❤️
🍎TO READ 🍎
The gut-wrenching realism and trans brujería of Las Malas, a novel by Argentinean author Camila Sosa Villada that transports you right into her world. Couldn’t recommend enough.
🍎TO WATCH 🍎
Patch Notes by FACT Magazine: A series that explores modular synthesizers and the art of making electronic music with hardware.
I’m especially in love with the sets by techno pop musician Ela Minus from Bogotá (who designs and builds her own instruments!) and sound artist Luiza Schulz Vazquez who performs at the stunning Parque Lage, a former mansion turned art school + public park in her home city of Rio de Janeiro.
I also recently binge-watched The Beatles: Get Back, a three-part documentary which follows the band as they write, rehearse and produce their last studio album Let It Be in 1969. It’s really fucking long (lol), but very inspiring to to witness the intensely emotional creative process that led up to their last-ever public performance on a rooftop in London. Also George Harrison’s outfits are excellent.
🍎TO LISTEN 🍎
Rep alert for my close friend and soul sister!
Isabel Soto is a super talented Montreal-based music producer and DJ from Venezuela who runs Sirius, a groovy techno podcast. She’s recently launched a brand-new record label NYXIII and the first EP Buho (set to release on February 28) is a compilation of various artists, carefully curated to take the listener on a voyage through sound. If you’re into ambient and hypnotic techno that transcends time and space, this is for you. I’m also SO EXCITED to go see her play Igloofest this weekend.
Lastly, I really enjoyed Zane Lowe's conversation with ROSALÍA about the production of her latest studio album MOTOMAMI where she chats about musical freedom, collaboration and her songwriting process. And because I feel some of it gets lost in translation, here’s an equally stirring interview in Spanish with musician and producer Jaime Altozano.
Until next time!