On her debut album, Colombian producer/songwriter Ela Minus brings her career's unexpected moves full circle. After becoming a drummer when she was 12, she played in a punk band for years, then embraced techno -- which she insisted on creating only with hardware instead of software and virtual instruments. The defiant punk spirit of her music remains strong on acts of rebellion, which finds her putting her ideals into practice and making her listeners consider what it means to rebel. On "they told us it was hard, but they ...
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On her debut album, Colombian producer/songwriter Ela Minus brings her career's unexpected moves full circle. After becoming a drummer when she was 12, she played in a punk band for years, then embraced techno -- which she insisted on creating only with hardware instead of software and virtual instruments. The defiant punk spirit of her music remains strong on acts of rebellion, which finds her putting her ideals into practice and making her listeners consider what it means to rebel. On "they told us it was hard, but they were wrong," she couches a genuinely subversive idea -- that liberation could be easy, and that doesn't make it any less desirable or necessary -- in beats and synths that reflect the intimacy and anonymity of a busy dance floor. Here and on "megapunk," where she whispers, "there's no way out but to fight," her music sounds sleekly propulsive and undeniably human at the same time. This mix of emotion and precise technique is always in service of making people dance as well as think, whether on "el cielo no es de nadie," a kinetic nod to her roots, or on "tony," where Minus hints at a luxurious melody with just a handful of elements and bottles the feeling of a wild night out. Even when it goes hard, there's a certain dreaminess to acts of rebellion, and the mix of softness and edges in Minus' music makes it all the more fascinating. On the fragile character sketch "dominique," confessions like "last night I went to bed at seven a.m." give the impression of glowing brightly in a darkened room, while Helado Negro's Roberto Carlos Lange adds extra coziness to the unguarded sweetness of "close." The album's instrumentals are just as vital to its message as the ones with vocals; the radiant warmth of "let them have the internet" conveys the idea that real life is much better than any virtual experience wordlessly and perfectly. On every track, Minus gives listeners a clear sense of her worldview and balances all the elements of her music with an organic sophistication remarkable for a debut album. As she puts it at one point on the album, "We always know in the first minute or so if something's worth staying for." In that amount of time, she proves that she's a force to be reckoned with, and acts of rebellion is just the start. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi
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