Colombian musician Ela Minus announces her debut album, acts of rebellion, out October 23rd on Domino. Performed, produced and recorded entirely by herself, acts of rebellion is a complex manifesto on simplicity, a call to fight, to live, to be present. It’s a collection about the personal as political and embracing the beauty of tiny acts of revolution in our everyday lives.
Having worked extensively as a “synthesizer assembler”, Ela Minus has a vast breadth of knowledge associated with these electronic devices; which is why the album has been solely created using synthesizers she has designed and built herself. Recorded at her home studio, Minus’ appreciation for a variety of diverse genres allows her to put a unique spin on the exhausted electronic genre to create 10 distinct pathways on acts of rebellion.
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.