Lucrecia Dalt (born 1980) is a Colombian experimental musician who currentl… Read Full Bio ↴Lucrecia Dalt (born 1980) is a Colombian experimental musician who currently resides in Berlin. While her earlier releases were rooted in electronic dance music her work has evolved over time to become more overtly abstract and experimental.

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.

Let's Pretend
Lucrecia Dalt Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Stay for a while
I will give you some tea
Stay just an hour
Won't be long, you will see
I can talk, I can play violin
Let's pretend that you like me

Stay for a while

Just two hours have passed
Stop looking at the time on your watch
We can dance we can play guitar
Let's pretend

Let's pretend
Please pretend
That you hear the words I say
Let's pretend
I'll pretend that some story will begin

Let's pretend
Just before
I'll get drunk and you will go
Say you're here with good intentions

Let's pretend
Please pretend
That you hear the words I say
Let's pretend
I'll pretend that some story will begin

Let's pretend
Just before

I'll get drunk and you will go
Say you're here with good intentions

Overall Meaning

The song "Let's Pretend" by Lucrecia Dalt is a slow, seductive invitation to someone to stay and spend some time with her. The opening lines of the song suggest that Dalt is offering her guest tea, which creates an atmosphere of comfort and warmth. As the song progresses, Dalt urges her guest to stay longer, telling them not to worry about the time. The repeated refrain of "Let's pretend" suggests that what's happening may not be entirely genuine or sincere. It's as if Dalt is trying to convince her guest to stay in a fantasy world that she's created for them.

As the song progresses, Dalt's tone and mood change. She tells her guest that they can dance and play guitar together, but there's a sense of desperation in her voice. She begs them to pretend to like her and to hear the words she's saying, even though they may not be sincere. The final lines of the song suggest that Dalt knows that her guest will eventually leave, but she wants them to assure her that they were there for the right reasons.

Overall, "Let's Pretend" is a haunting and melancholy song that explores the desire for human connection and the difficulty of finding it. Dalt's lyrics are open to interpretation, but they suggest a sense of loneliness and isolation that can be felt by anyone who's ever longed for someone to stay with them, even for just a little while.

Line by Line Meaning

Stay for a while
I want you to stay here with me for a bit

I will give you some tea
I want to offer you something to drink while we talk

Stay just an hour
I don't want to take up too much of your time

Won't be long, you will see
I promise that time will pass quickly

I can talk, I can play violin
I have different skills and interests that I can share with you

Let's pretend that you like me
I know you might not actually like me, but let's pretend for a little bit

Just two hours have passed
Time has flown by since you got here

Stop looking at the time on your watch
Don't worry about leaving soon, just enjoy the moment

We can dance we can play guitar
There are many things we can do together

Let's pretend
Let's create a fantasy world for ourselves

Please pretend
I'm asking you to join me in pretending