Lucrecia Dalt was born in Pereira, Colombia in 1980. She studied civil engineering and worked for two years in a geotechnical company in Medellin before deciding to pursue music.
Her first recordings were released by Columbian collective Series under the name Lucrecia. After meeting Gudrun Gut, she contributed four songs to the 4 Women No Cry compilation released on Monika Enterprise in 2008.
After moving to Europe she released a series of recordings, including a release on Nicolás Jaar's Other People imprint and a series of collaborations with Aaron Dilloway. Among her more recent releases are the albums Anticlines (2018) and No Era Sólida (2020) on RVNG Intl.
Like the whirr of a wake-up call, Lucrecia Dalt’s metallic compositions entice us to rethink the possibilities of materiality and existence. The Colombian musician and sound artist has carved out a place at the contemporary frontiers of avant-garde and electronic music, hardware in hand, to channel age-old questions into a distinct and transgressive musical language.
Perhaps the ability to dig a little deeper is hard-wired into Dalt’s creative process through her background as a geotechnical engineer. Now residing in Berlin, Dalt often seeks inspiration in the worlds of fiction, poetry, geology and desire, excavating nuanced references to untangle and respond to in her music. At times, this exploratory impulse surfaces like an introspective call and response experiment with her source material, forming new perspectives on ideas rooted in Colombian mythology to German New Wave cinema. Dalt’s conceptual blueprints are intimate and intricate, emerging like cyanotypes cast in the sun. Around these frameworks she shapes her sound, using analogue instrumentation, a vast array of synthesizers and the processed glow of her voice.
Dalt joined the RVNG family in 2018 with the release of Anticlines. Interspersed with enigmatic metaphors, the record channels at its core the principle of tectonic plates compressing stratified rock: old material is pushed to the centre and sometimes becomes exposed. Guided by this concern with boundaries and edges, Dalt reframes traditional Latin American rhythms beside visceral tones of electronic composition and fragmented spoken word, tracing new contours in the topography of human consciousness. The poetic lyrics of Anticlines were written collaboratively between Dalt and artist Henry Andersen, and the accompanying artwork was realised by visual artist and ongoing collaborator Regina de Miguel.
With the release of Dalt’s seventh album No era sólida (2020), another world is located in her universe. In an embrace of introspection, Dalt sets out to capture the moment when one becomes pure sound. This transcendent process of creation summons Lia: an apparition of the artist as possessed by mimetic impulses. Language is dissolved into an evocative collection of glossolalia as the record swells with rhythmic tremors and the lunar echoes of a lawless organism tethered to sonic hardware. Navigating through each song as a different state experienced by Lia, the album closes with spoken word reflections on the existence of an unworldly lifeform seeded through sound.
Her sound work has been presented internationally in spaces such as Issue Project Room, Pioneer Works in New York, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Museum of Modern Artin Medellín, the Mies van der Rohe pavilion in Barcelona, the New South Walles art gallery in Sydney, among others.
Ara
Lucrecia Dalt Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Casi casi todo el año igual
Sin sombras largas en enero
E infinito sol en junio fins mes tard
La tramontana pasó
Será que fue quien me dejó un montón
De dulces frente a mi puerta hoy?
Y es que sólo me ha tocado el tiempo
Casi casi todo el año igual
Sin sombras largas en enero
E infinito sol en junio fins mes tard
In Lucrecia Dalt's song Ara, the lyrics describe a sense of monotony in the singer's life, in which time passes without much change. The opening lines, "Y es que sólo me ha tocado el tiempo / Casi casi todo el año igual" (And it's just time that has touched me / Almost the entire year the same), set the tone for the rest of the song. The singer reflects on the lack of variation they experience throughout the year, without even long shadows in January or anything but endless sun in June. The use of the word "tocado" (touched) adds a sense of passivity to this experience, as though time is happening to them rather than them actively engaging with life.
Later in the song, the singer wonders if the wind that has come and gone was responsible for the sweet things left at their door, introducing a sense of mystery and possible magic into this otherwise unchanging world. The repetition of the chorus emphasizes the continual nature of this experience of monotony, with the same almost identical line repeated multiple times. Altogether, Ara paints a picture of a life that is defined by its sameness and routine, with occasional moments of magic and mystery that provide some respite from this.
Line by Line Meaning
Y es que sólo me ha tocado el tiempo
I have only experienced time in this way
Casi casi todo el año igual
Almost the entire year is the same
Sin sombras largas en enero
No long shadows in January
E infinito sol en junio fins mes tard
And infinite sun in June until late in the month
La tramontana pasó
The tramontana wind has passed
Será que fue quien me dejó un montón
Maybe it was the one who left a pile for me
De dulces frente a mi puerta hoy?
Of sweets in front of my door today?
Writer(s): Lucrecia Dalt
Contributed by Leah B. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@pblozckd71
Y es que sólo me ha tocado el tiempo
Casi casi todo el año igual
Sin sombras largas en enero
E infinito sol en junio fins mes tard
La tramontana pasó
Será que fue quien me dejó un montón
De dulces frente a mi puerta hoy?
-Tramontana es viento frío y turbulento que sucede en la región de Cataluña.
-"fins mes tard" en catálan signifca hasta más tarde.
Hermosa canción.
@alonsoboulevard
one of the best tracks of my life...
@pentahidroxina
alonsoboulevard Absolutly, very inspiring song.
@juaricolas
Same
@BriannaKin
Same. Fuck. Gets me everytime
@pblozckd71
Que esta canción me hace sentir el frío de un amanecer en la ciudad
@pblozckd71
Y es que sólo me ha tocado el tiempo
Casi casi todo el año igual
Sin sombras largas en enero
E infinito sol en junio fins mes tard
La tramontana pasó
Será que fue quien me dejó un montón
De dulces frente a mi puerta hoy?
-Tramontana es viento frío y turbulento que sucede en la región de Cataluña.
-"fins mes tard" en catálan signifca hasta más tarde.
Hermosa canción.
@roohocking4052
Have been fixated on this song for years, honestly.
@hmslf
think i'm going down that same beautiful road now, but only started a couple months back..
@stefanbraidwood2007
absolutely
@ricardotorres7879
Same here! This sounds like a live performance, not bad at all, but I definitely prefer the studio version.