{"title":"Ale Hop","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"why-is-it-they-say-a-city-like-any-city","title":"Why Is It They Say A City Like Any City?","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe new album by the Peruvian-born \/ Berlin-based experimental artist Ale Hop was\nconceived in a context of immobility and provides six sonic vignettes that wonder about\nlocation, circularity, rootedness and experience. In collaboration with Ana Quiroga,\nConcepcion Huerta, Daniela Huerta, Elsa M'balla, Felicity Magan, Fil Uno, Ignacio Briceño,\nKMRU, Manongo Mujica, Moises Horta, Nicole L'huillier, Raul Jardín, Sukitoa Onamau,\nTomas Tello.\n\nFollowing her explorations on music's inherent fixation to geographic space and time, be it through\nthe longing of home (\"Apophenia\" 2019) or scientific magnification of invisible worlds (\"The Life of\nInsects\" 2020), Berlin-based Peruvian-born experimental composer Ale Hop's fourth album, \"Why\nIs It They Say a City Like Any City?\", was conceived in a context of immobility. During the lockdown\nmonths, she started a process of remote collaboration, by sending messages, posted from various\ncities along a South American trip, to thirteen musicians from around the world. She journaled her\nimpressions upon these places to an intimate fictional character while reflecting on matters of time,\nsound, space, cosmology and colonial memory. The thirteen musicians dialogued with this voice by\ntaking upon the challenge of responding to the messages with sound collaborations.\nField recordings, mouth drumming, drone cellos, electronic loops, arrhythmic rhythms and voices\ncame back from this experiment. Ale assembled them, by layering, twisting and turning, into sonic\nvignettes that wonder about location, circularity, rootedness and experience, making it the first time\nshe's set her guitar aside. Expect no answers to the album's title question, but an innermost\npsychedelic rumination.\n\"Despite the technological resources that appear to dilute distances, the simulation of closeness\nmirrored on the digital space is an emptied body, a state of precarity, a flat surface; unable to\nwithhold an experience of exchange,\" Ale states. \"So, I began this project by asking myself, how\ncan we escape from the reduced experience of the virtual? The idea behind this experiment was\nthat my messages and the places they describe could drive the composition, be a catalyzer, a\nscore. Thus, to use geography as a tool to remember and imagine, to allow new soundscapes to\nemerge.\"\n\"Memory, diffuse and divergent, sometimes reaches out to the future in its search for form, taking\nshape from the reflections and echoes that come back … like throwing a rock in a pond and having\na rock thrown back at you.\"\nTracklist:\n# The Mountain That Eats Men (collab. with Raul Jardín \u0026amp; Sukitoa o Namau)\n# Mayu Islapi (collab. with Ana Quiroga, Fil Uno \u0026amp; Ignacio Briceño)\n# Latitud 0  (collab. with Daniela Huerta \u0026amp; Manongo Mujica)\n# They Thought of Themselves (collab. with Felicity Mangan \u0026amp; KMRU)\n# Chiapas \u0026amp; Phinaya (collab. with Concepción Huerta \u0026amp; Tomas Tello)\n# Once Upon a Time (collab. with Elsa M'Balla \u0026amp; Nicole L'Huillier)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Karlrecords","offers":[{"title":"LP.","offer_id":50394724401483,"sku":"2055996","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_d9baec2c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726446863"},{"product_id":"agua-dulce","title":"Agua Dulce","description":"\u003cp\u003eA meeting of Afro-Peruvian percussion with electronic experimentation. Laura Robles, percussionist with a long history in the world of jazz, and Ale Hop, guitarist and sound artist, are two of the most outstanding Peruvian artists today. Berlin-based Peruvian musicians Alejandra C?rdenas, AKA Ale Hop, and Laura Robles present their debut album together, released via Buh Records. With a foundation informed by decolonialism and organology, 'Agua Dulce' is a radical deconstruction of traditional rhythms of the Peruvian coast, in which the caj?n instrument plays a central role. 'Agua Dulce' is named after the most popular beach in Lima, near where both artists lived during their childhood, houses apart, without ever meeting one another. Now, years later, the pair have joined forces, with Robles on a self-built electric caj?n and C?rdenas on electric guitar and electronics. Together they explore rhythmical structures that form the backbone of the complex Afro-Peruvian music and dance traditions - a broad term used for the various musical developments that occurred in the last two centuries, at the shores of the Peruvian Pacific. The caj?n originated in coastal Peru as a percussion instrument that the black slaves created from wooden fruit boxes, when foot drums were banned at the end of the Spanish colonial-era, in the 19th century. From its birth the caj?n was a symbol of resistance, experimentation and transformation, so Robles and C?rdenas strive to maintain the instrument's spirit and qualities by pushing the boundaries of its sound into the future. However, although buzzing with an intense voltage and proffering a fresh contribution to modern experimental\/noise\/low fi\/percussive music, the duo's mission isn't merely capturing something sonically futuristic, but is primarily concerned with shaking off the dust: \"These rhythms have become ossified nowadays, heard in Peruvian folklore shows, and on the 'global music' circuit, but our desire is to experiment and do something more radical with them, connecting to the instruments more radical past\", comments C?rdenas. The two musicians take the pulses of dances like Land?, Zamacueca, Festejo, Alcatraz, Lamento and Son de los diablos, electrifying and mutating them into pure textures, or reinforcing the physical character of the caj?n through repetition and distortion. 'Agua Dulce' is published through Buh Records in a vinyl edition, limited to 300 copies. Cover Art by Eduardo Yaguas.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Buh","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50527099421003,"sku":"2016531","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_2316070a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728051706"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/ale-hop.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}