The ballad of Monty

A writer and multi-instrumentalist of Honduran descent, born in Texas in 2002 but based for the past few years in Aliso Viejo, California, Monty Cime might just be the best-kept secret of the American underground. A brilliant, combative personality blessed with above-average intelligence, Monty, after graduating in ethnomusicology, devoted herself to the study of Latin American history, particularly that of the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the sociopolitical movements that took shape in that era.

Classically trained, Monty launched her first solo project, Syzygy, back in high school, releasing three EPs: "Spatial Awareness" (2018), dominated by a rather rough-edged, lo-fi indie-folk; "The Little Church" (2019), poised between post-punk, industrial and neo-folk; and "Syzygy" (2019), which also opens up to a kind of glam-inflected cabaret. The name Syzygy came about "at eleven years old, when, having discovered the existence of the word 'syzygy', I tried to demonstrate its meaning through an example, and so I theorized that art is the result of an alignment (a 'syzygy', precisely) of influences and life experiences beyond our control".

At the end of 2019, together with friends Yui and Rowan, Monty formed Costco Boyfriend, who, on their self-titled EP released in January 2021, crafted a playful, tantalizing blend of post-punk, garage rock, neo-psychedelia, jangle-pop, freak-folk and lo-fi. Costco Boyfriend operated on one guiding principle, "finding the humor in tragedy", the kind that surfaces when you think about "the vacuity of post-9/11 American neoliberalism", or about "suburbs as ideological and cultural graveyards".

During this formative experience, Monty noticed that, generally, "people tend to applaud white artists for their 'super deep' music, when what they actually mean is 'sad and slow'. That same audience often mocks upbeat, danceable Latin music, because to them it seems superficial or 'simple'".

It was precisely in the Costco Boyfriend years that the Aliso Viejo artist best defined her relationship with her own influences, ranging from Rubén Blades to Peter Brotzmann, from Café Tacvba to Carlos & Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy, from Black Eyes to Victor Jara, from Corea to Stravinsky, by way of Arco Iris, Meridian Brothers, Astor Piazzolla, Brave Little Abacus and Charlie Haden. Also fundamental to her music are Afro-Latin jazz, Latin American nueva canción, sass music, emo and post-hardcore. At the same time, as a committed communist, she began radicalizing her political engagement, in the belief that "all music carries political value, even through the total rejection of the premise. To be more precise, art is labor, and the very act of laboring is a political process."

With these ideas firmly in place, Monty's musical journey continued under the simple name Cime, with the aim of "building, starting from the legacy and structure laid down by Latin American nueva canción, a sound that takes into account the musical developments that have occurred since its birth in the Seventies, or that I at least believe help further its principles: in short, I'm thinking of punk, no wave, industrial, noise (and noise-rock), emo, and so on".

What interests Monty most is no wave, "because", she explains, "it represents an incisive bridge between the academic world and the popular one. Its methodology is decidedly rooted in 20th-century Western classical music (post-minimalist), but its characteristics are entirely folkloric: the prevalence of the hemiola, repetition, tribal drumming, a limited harmonic and melodic palette, abstract lyrics, stream of consciousness and so on… all of these are representative of Latin American folklore. The compositional techniques 'introduced' by musicians like Steve Reich or Philip Glass were already being used in Latin American and African musical styles. The only distinction is that one had the institutional authority of academia behind it to assert its legitimacy, and the other didn't".

The first fruit of the Cime project was the LP The Independence Of Central America Remains An Unfinished Experiment (9 tracks; 30:36), released in July 2022 by Syzygy Records (the label the Honduran-born artist had founded five years earlier to put out her own music) and wrapped in a cover that, Monty explains, looks "like a leather-bound novel, on which sits a portrait of me in profile, nervously looking at the viewer, perhaps seeking reassurance, modeled on a famous lithograph of the Central American political hero Francisco Morazán, who, against intense political opposition, championed — to the point of staging a war — the need to maintain a federal union of the Central American states, in order to safeguard political stability against foreign adversaries, whether colonial powers or otherwise".

As for the title of this first Cime record, the artist explains she had it in mind for several years already, because "'The Independence Of Central America Remains An Unfinished Experiment' uses the pretext of major events in Central American history as a means of reflecting on the events that had marked the previous year of my life up to that point, drawing a dense web of connections between recurring figures or conflicts in Central American history and real-world events, concerning both my own life and present-day Central American geopolitics. Beneath all of this lies a story of self-realization, one that finds me grappling with my identity as a trans woman, while at the same time being far, far too scared to say any of these things in a way that might even resemble being forthright. The 'independence' referenced in the title is both the sociopolitical independence of Central America from the looming United States, and, functionally speaking, my own personal independence from my former self, killed off in one of the many battles that define an ongoing transition process. Ultimately, my intent is to advance the idea that my life and my experience are a microcosm and a reflection of Central American history itself, positioning myself as a successor to the spirit of Morazán and of Honduras (if not of Central America as a whole)".

In this strongly politicized work, echoes of four essential albums can be felt. First of all, "Santa María de Iquique" by the Chilean group Quilapayun, a 1978 record that alternates songs and spoken-word interludes, blending elements of local musical folklore with those of classical and religious music. Then there's "Maestra Vida" by Rubén Blades, a 1980 double LP that captured Monty's imagination for its ability to range across different South American musical styles, from Cuban son to classic salsa. "Listening to it", Monty further notes, "feels like holding something precious. Which was exactly what I wanted to achieve in making this first record of mine".

Another essential album was "Hang" (2017) by Foxygen, defined by "a baroque, satirical pop sound, heavily influenced by 1940s Hollywood film scores, that warns against the dangers of American cultural imperialism and the self-destructive nature of those who chase fame and fortune by moving to Hollywood, with messages largely wrapped up in extended metaphors and biblical allusions. It's structured like a musical, with side A and side B standing in for two acts respectively".

Finally, Monty mentions the name of Honduran singer-songwriter Guillermo Anderson, above all in reference to the posthumous album “Ese Mortal Llamado Morazán” (2017), “a soundtrack written for an eponymous play that was inspired by the life of Francisco Morazán, an international hero and Honduran fellow countryman celebrated as the liberator of Central America”. This is probably the album that weighed most heavily on the making of The Independence Of Central America Remains An Unfinished Experiment, “especially as far as the use of leitmotifs and the metaphorical approach to writing about historical events are concerned.”

A clear trace of the influence of Guillermo Anderson's work on this Cime debut is "Canción Para Guillermo (Song For Guillermo)", a track that, in its uninhibited movement between the various influences mentioned so far, could well serve as a manifesto for a synthesis of Latin American nueva canción, freak-folk, post-punk flare-ups, psychedelic pop and playful experimentation. So, if "¡Convicción! (Campaña Nacional)" makes you wonder what someone like Dogbowl might have done had he received a few records as a gift from Monty Cime, "Compay (Independencia)" sketches out a lopsided, deliberately graceless landscape, while paying tribute to Simón Bolívar, who made an essential contribution to the independence of Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela (“Bolivar ci aspetta/ Niente è mai veramente finito/ E tu puoi cambiarlo/ Se iniziamo a camminare, Compay/ Possiamo farcela”).

"Friends/Enemies (Earnest/Irony) [Disolución]", on the other hand, has the shape of a noir-jazz piece recorded as best as could be managed; "Mother" seems to allude, with its small Babel of voices more or less in tune, more or less in the foreground, to the syncretism underlying modern Latin American identity, while "God, The FSLN, And The Despots (The Age-Old Story)" offers flashes of salsa and polyrhythms drawn from a garifuna drum.

Dedicated by Monty to her mother and "centred on the rise of banana republics and the current mass migration of our people, who are leaving Honduras behind because of the crisis of capitalism", "By The Bunches (Banana Dictatorships)" resembles a folk-country piece played by an Appalachian Magic Band, and is therefore ramshackle and ungainly, yet with a logic all its own. "Many of the songs on 'The Independence…' touch on formative experiences. In this specific case, 'By The Bunches' is about growing up with a vaguely middle-class identity, where your needs are met, even though you're still constantly struggling for stability. Much of the album tries to focus on reconciling past, present and future, not only on a personal level. What I try to do is find parallels between my past and the present. 'By The Bunches' also loops back to my current self, where I want to become a musician but don't know how I can afford college and rent. I'd say that's exactly how I got to know myself, by building parallels between who I am and who I've always been, and trying to reconcile it all with an eye to the future".

While the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band drives along in slow motion under the influence of opiates on "200 Years… (And What Came of Them)", Monty invokes some great singer-songwriters (Phil Ochs, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, Victor Jara), before bending under the weight of despair, since, after two hundred years, “Cosa ne è venuto fuori?/ Abbiamo spezzato le nostre catene, ora siamo di nuovo incatenati/ Ci siamo liberati, poi ci siamo venduti/ Solo per nutrirci, ora è andato tutto a rotoli/ Il vincolo è forte, sì, è più forte del legame dell’unione, che appartiene al nostro passato”. There is, then, nothing to celebrate, because "the independence of Central America is still only an experiment".

200 years, what came of them?

we broke our chains, now we’re re-chateled

we freed ourselves, then we sold ourselves

just to feed ourselves, now it’s gone to hell

the bind is strong, yes, it’s stronger than the bond

of the union, which to our own past belongs

Morazán still lives within us

he is not dead, hope is not dead

God is not dead, we are not dead

but above all else, I ask with full intent

how am i supposed to celebrate with laughter and merriment

when the independence of central america is still just an experiment?

With the participation of trusty Rowan Collins on electric guitar and a dozen other collaborators, split between drums, bass, guitars, flute, quena, quenacho, keyboards, cello, trumpet, alto sax, violin, clarinet, double bass and xylophone, between October 2022 and August 2023 Monty threw herself headlong into making the EP Laurels Of The End Of History (6 tracks; 18:51), on which, besides singing, she herself splits her time between a huge array of instruments, including theatre organ, garifuna drums, wooden frog, drums, bongos, conga, accordion, acoustic guitar, baritone ukulele, autoharp, marimba, fretless and electric bass, cajón and maracas. Presented as a "megamix of Latin parties", Laurels Of The End Of History is "a fierce indictment of neoliberalism" that, in hoping for the birth of a new Latin-futuristic utopia, draws on an avant-garde folk devoted to creating a shapeshifting cacophony.

Now well on their way to a very particular Central/Latin American fusion, Cime signal a toughening of their sound on the live album Frida And The Filibusters Bid Farewell And Fall Asunder (12 tracks; 34:58), recorded on 18 August 2023 at the FTG Warehouse in Santa Ana, California, and released at the start of the following December. "For us," Monty says, "it was, besides a reflection on our past, the culmination of our growth (both in the studio and live), as well as a crossroads pointing towards our future. On that day in August, seven people got together on a small stage to give it their all, and each of their musical backgrounds merged to create a visceral and, in its own way, lyrical sound. After a year spent transforming and perfecting my songs so I could play them at their best live, our sound ended up becoming practically unrecognisable compared to our studio albums, yet the direction felt more than natural; in fact, it seemed to us like the way we should have always been playing".

Here, then, come a punk-jazz-rock version of "Compay (Independencia)", complete with an ending steeped in Ayler-esque visions, a frantic and furious "¡Convicción! (Campaña Nacional)", the acid funk & latin-jazz of Guillermo Anderson's "Por Esa Negra", while "City Upon a Hill" presents a lopsided rhythm, flashes of metaphysical horns and an intoxicating voice, and "The Lost Last Man" (originally placed at the close of Laurels Of The End Of History) becomes an oblique psych-jazz-rock device with Latin overtones, ready, when needed, to throw itself into the jaws of punk.

Live, Monty says, "ours is a war of sounds. We're also a very provocative band. I like going into the crowd, I like hurting myself on stage. Our philosophy, which springs spontaneously from the fact that we usually play for more or less indifferent audiences, is simple: if they don't care, then the least we can do is make us hard to ignore."

After a brief period of reflection, Cime settled into an expanded lineup which, besides its leader, now includes Rowan Collins (electric guitar, bass, synth, vocals), Sean Hoss (keyboards, piano, soprano and tenor sax, bass clarinet, vocals), riley. (flute, bass flute, alto and tenor sax), Austin Jenkins (electric guitar, drums), Jonas Phipps (bass, vocals), Brian Watson (trumpet), Elijah Parra (trombone), multi-instrumentalist and producer Lautaro Akira Martinez-Satoh, and singer Kaydi Sweet.

In July of this year, 2024, the band went back into the studio (Bing Bong, in San Clemente, California) to record the material that would make up The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble (6 tracks; 56:50), released last August 2nd. The cover art draws on the painting titled "L'incendio della locanda" ("La Quema del Meson"; 1896) by Costa Rican painter Enrique Echandi, depicting the second Battle of Rivas (1856), "the main turning point of the Filibuster War, which saw mercenaries backed by the United States attempt to seize the Central American region and turn it into a slave state."

As the running time and track count make clear, this is a far cry from the relatively short songs of The Independence Of Central America Remains An Unfinished Experiment — a sign that Monty and her collaborators' music has now turned toward structurally more complex forms in order to fully unleash its political force and cathartic impact. But the band's new direction has also been shaped by some profound changes in its leader's life, so it's worth letting her speak for herself at this point: "Over the last two years, I've gone through a period of social transition, and as I write this, I've been on hormone replacement therapy for fifteen months and two days. I don't feel my personal expression needs to be hidden between the lines or behind metaphors. During the time I spent writing and recording 'The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble', I was homeless, and that ultimately shaped the music. This record wasn't meant to be the follow-up to our debut, but it ended up presenting itself to me in the end. I'd also broken up with the person who had, in a sense, been the project's muse. I don't think it's fair to call it a breakup album, but I know I had to come to terms with this new social reality, and I had to prove I was capable of handling it. Interestingly, though, the same was true of 'The Independence Of...' — except back then, instead of breaking up with a partner, I'd broken up with my old band. I'd also learned a lot, including on an artistic level, from the time I'd spent in the Orange County scene, so I felt I had to prove I was capable and that my approach wasn't fundamentally flawed. In the meantime, Cime has evolved from a solo project into a band of around nine people, and for this new record I especially have to thank Rowan Collins, who wrote and arranged a good deal of the material, with support from riley. and Sean Hoss."

Sean Hoss himself described the birth of The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble this way: "Monty has been homeless for a while, so earlier this year I had her stay with me for a few months. I vividly remember her sitting in my closet for entire days without sleeping, recording demos with her guitar and my cheap plastic keyboard. It was beautiful watching her blossom into such an ambitious album with such a massive array of instrumentation. This album is fusion without compromise. Its Latin roots aren't watered down by elements of noise rock, jazz and Western classical music. Monty's identity isn't watered down either — her experiences and intense emotions, as staged on this album, are never erased."

The "fusion without compromise" Hoss describes is, stripped of metaphor, a particularly intense hybrid of many different things, ranging from Latin American nueva canción to avant-prog, from tropicannibalism to avant-garde jazz, from emo to neo-psychedelia, passing through post-hardcore, screamo and no wave.

Cime on The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble are a band in a state of grace, having absorbed healthy doses of avant-prog and jazz-rock, all seasoned with no-wave spice, Zolo and Zeuhl: "In a way, I think I stumbled into avant-prog, while Rowan was more proactive about it. Together we listened to a lot of Soft Machine before working on the record, and in the period leading up to the recording sessions I finally fell in love with John Zorn and Naked City. But no wave was definitely a direct source of inspiration for me; I felt the connections between no wave and popular Latin songs were still completely unexplored! As for Zolo, that was mostly Rowan's thing (he got me into Cardiacs, though it would be silly of me to claim I know them well), and the same goes for Zeuhl: while writing the album's songs, Rowan listened a lot to Magma, Soft Machine, This Heat, James Chance, La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros and other projects by Charly Garcia."

The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble takes off with "A Tranny's Appeal To Heaven," a progressive Latin-jazz piece (inspired by the death of Nex Benedict) that carries traces of blues, bossa nova, nueva canción and Mexican ballad. The song's progression is slow and relentless, eventually carrying us onto a runaway roller coaster, with keyboards and horns so manic they bring to mind either a party fueled by some not-exactly-legal substances or a kraut-rock take on Hampton Grease Band. Meanwhile, after invoking God (“God save my soul, God give me strength/ Come close to feel within arm’s length/ Forgive my father for which I’m unable/ Forgive everyone for which I’m unable”), Monty (whose voice shifts from conversational tones to violent outbursts) confesses she doesn't want to die, and if it must happen, she at least hopes to look good (“I don’t want to die/ But if I do, I hope I look al right/ Should I put my makeup on tonight?/ Just in case I die, just in case I die”).

The skittering, carefree stride of the first part of "The Ballad Of Tim Ballard" gives way to a tightly cadenced jazz-rock that the Mothers Of Invention would have thoroughly enjoyed. It's one of the record's most ironic tracks, not least because it's about Tim Ballard, who, after founding a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting child exploitation and pedophilia, was recently accused of sexual misconduct... Inspired by the songs of Guillermo Anderson (think "Estos Marineros (Barco Centroamericano)" and "Por Esa Negra"), by the music of Bartók, Scriabin and Strauss ("to expand" Anderson's "harmonic palette"), as well as by the jazz of Eddie Palmieri and the progressive rock/fusion of Argentina's Serú Girán, "The Ballad Of Tim Ballard" shines a light on the quintessentially American motto: "Cause the problem, claim you solved it."

Anchored to a blunt bass riff, "DIYUSA" (a track reflecting the Aliso Viejo artist's frustrations with the Orange County scene) builds a bridge between post-punk, Zolo and no wave (especially "the tight, post-minimalist approach of Glenn Branca and Swans"), launching into a raucous percussive party with Lautaro Akira Martinez-Satoh as master of ceremonies, while Monty attacks the microphone with her Spanish tongue, taking aim, in her own way, at the disguised imperialism of the United States of America. By the end, you get a taste of what Gang Of Four might have sounded like under the African sun.

Before exploding into a raucous jazzcore brawl, "Lempira (Or, The Lencan Crusade)" sounds at first like a typical track from any band obsessed with Slint — only played at double speed. "Thematically," Monty explains, "it's a very adventurous track, in which the issue emerges that liberalism's reification of minorities inevitably leads to fascist reductions of history, because the violence and dehumanization of millions of people at the hands of their own governments is baked into the founding and maintenance of nation-states."

Musically speaking, on the other hand, "Lempira (Or, The Lencan Crusade)" reflects an analysis of the "similarities between the musical dialects of tango and emo/screamo/skramz," and in particular, within this triad, the name that most impacted Monty's creativity was that of Las Vegas band Crochet, whose guitarist, Zach Tarzi, took part in the recording of The Independence Of Central America Remains An Unfinished Experiment.

The album's masterpiece, and Cime's most important song to date, is "The North," which dates back to the final phase of Costco Boyfriend, though at the time it had a jangle-pop shape and focused "on the hypocrisy of those who champion 'sustainability' through veganism while simultaneously supporting industries built on migrant labor." "'The North' and its lyrics are, ultimately, defined by a single word that hovers over the whole record: 'recursive.' 'The North' is a song in three parts: an intro, an outro, and a main section; however, the main section (the one with the words) is itself divided into three main 'parts.' At its most basic, this song is about the geopolitical relationship between Honduras and America, but seen from three different perspectives (interpersonal, social and intrapersonal; or, alternatively: that of reflection, that of a call to action, and finally that concerning introspection). So there's the migrant, a single figure standing out against the backdrop of a much larger phenomenon of mass migration from Central America's Northern Triangle; then there's the neoliberal world order, which sees the United States perpetuating regional instability so as to encourage mass migration for economic gain; and then there's me, a Honduran-American who is ultimately a product of both of the above, and whose objections to the United States are entirely, and very strongly, moralistic. 'The North,' a metaphor and a phrase often used in Central America to refer to the United States of America, is a spectacle that strikes both the concrete and the abstract; it's literally the United States of America, but it's also a specter of the mind. The cultural imperialism the United States imposes on Central America fuels mass migration, implanting the North into the collective consciousness and making a strong Honduran identity impossible, because it positions Central American culture as inherently inferior, and that mindset persists — even when it isn't explicitly taught — in the hearts of migrants' children living, like me, in the Imperial Core. It's a song that, ironically, is about both the construction of Honduran identity and about the North, because Honduras as it exists today cannot be discussed without the North. The migrant is convinced there's nothing left for him in Honduras. Culture is passed down to him, from birth, always in relation to the United States. I've lived in Latin America, so ultimately my experience is slightly different, but I feel sad for lives I never knew and deaths I narrowly avoided. It doesn't matter where we find ourselves: we always end up feeling alien simply by virtue of living there. Despite the fundamental disconnection that underlies both my being Honduran and my being an artist, my existence persists out of spite. And while many people read that as a terrible position to hold, defining existence through defiance is incredibly promising."

An "exercise in maximalist performance paired with Cime's signature style of songwriting," as well as a "first-person account of migration amid the average American's indifference," "The North" clocks in at twenty-five minutes and twenty-seven seconds and is, as we now know, divided into three parts. First comes "a dynamic, noisy intro," in which, for about nine minutes, piano, synth and flute sketch out a landscape that is at once mysterious and boundless, moving between clearings and atonal conflagrations; then comes a "densely orchestrated anti-epic," opened by the sound of a bass clarinet, making room for a typical narrative of migration on foot, driven by economic precarity. This, Monty explains, is "a set-up based on Guillermo Anderson's 'Chago (Santiago)', in which the protagonist, as he moves farther from home, encounters escalating levels of violence." In this second part, the music is driven by the pulse of the bass into the territory of an obsessive, jazzed-up funk-punk, letting the menacing shadow of Magma's Zeuhl loom in the background. As it tragically unfolds before our ears, the lyrics gradually bring together the historical and the personal dimensions — leaving behind images of migrants who died trying to cross the border into the United States (“Shot dead in the water/ May the river lead me home/ The North is where I die/ Wet, cold, and alone”) — alongside Monty's wish not to be who she is, both from a socio-cultural-economic standpoint (“I wish I hadn’t come here either/ And I wish I’d never been born/ I wish I didn’t speak English/ And I wish I wasn’t homeless”) and a sexual one ("I wish I wasn't transgender").

In the final part of "The North," an acoustic guitar rings out mournful and sad into the vertical night, as the cicadas raise their own voices.

The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble closes with "Goodnight From La Ceiba," a field recording of a traditional Punta from Puerto Cortés, captured by the Ethnic Folkways Library in 1952 from the Garifuna* of Honduras. A choice that only seems out of context. Here's what Monty told us: "A big part of the record is focused on fusion, but I think people treat fusion as a kind of rhetorical dare: 'What's the strangest combination of things I can think of?' And then they try to answer it. That's exactly why I personally don't subscribe to the label. As far as I'm concerned, fusion is a structure; I think there's so much common ground between seemingly distant musical traditions, it's just a matter of being able to choose from them in ways that are thoughtful and in service of a higher musical purpose. That said, there was a fair amount of debate within the band about the purpose of 'Goodnight From La Ceiba.' Some wanted us to turn it into a proper song, recording it from scratch. For a few reasons, though, the sample was extremely important. First of all, sampling is fusion, but fusion is more than just composition: it's context. Some wanted to fold the sample into 'The North,' but I felt that, on its own, 'Goodnight From La Ceiba' made as powerful a statement as any other track on the record. Letting it be absorbed into 'The North,' on the other hand, would have erased all of that. I think recontextualization and sampling in themselves are extremely important compositional tools. The 'Goodnight From La Ceiba' sample comes from a 1950s archival recording titled 'The Black Caribs Of Honduras,' and was given the rather unceremonious title of 'Punta,' which isn't really a title at all, but the name of the dance. Credited to an 'unspecified' author, I felt it represented the absolute nadir of the academic approach to music — depersonalized and decontextualized, but not in an interesting way, simply stripped of all the meaning and emotion that were once an ontological force within the music. Had we re-recorded the track, all of that feeling would have been lost. 'The North' is about building meaning and identity out of the metaphorical cracks in the concrete; 'Goodnight From La Ceiba' properly documents the germination process of seeds that now bloom into thorny, beautiful roses. In this way, the line is blurred between fusion and tradition, between what is academic and what is popular, and — as Rowan once observed when arguing that we should re-record 'Goodnight From La Ceiba' — between sampling and plagiarism."

The original lyrics of "Goodnight From La Ceiba", in the Garifuna language, are as follows:

Nuruhumaariheihabuidumeninamafarulubadena

Lamisehuarinugunetiliveuaiuaicameasagare

Naumalulenolabruhabalubauadubiregunielunlasagerone

ArensebabiludoBerona

In English:

Sit down, watch the pleasure. It won't kill me.

Misery reaches the sky, the flowers and the trees.

My brothers will fall and the crows will come.

Prepare your mourning, Berona [a woman's name, ed.]

The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble is the work of an artist and an ensemble well aware of their own strength. At this point, all that's left to do is wait for their next moves: "I'm very proud of this record, but it wasn't made without its fair share of pain. Success has sharpened our focus and sent our motivation through the roof. For the first time, it seems like everyone is as excited about it as I am. We have a very solid philosophical foundation for our next project: expanding on the success of this record's dense instrumentation, while also choosing a much stranger instrumental palette to work with, based on the concept of an anachronistic orquesta típica, or early-20th-century Latin American musical band, making greater use of analog synthesizers and no-input mixers, for both tonal and atonal purposes, writing a greater number of relatively shorter songs that still rise and fall as much as they do on this record, while flowing together seamlessly... In short, they'll need to be somewhat more cohesive songs, ultimately trying to combine the syncretic triumphs of early sass with the emblematic dynamics of emo, but also with experimental big band and spiritual jazz, so as to create a new Latin American songbook similar to the incredibly caustic tropicannibalism. In many ways, our next record will be a very direct spiritual successor, but also an expansion and refinement, in terms of language, of 'The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble'".

Note

* The Garifuna are an ethnic group found mainly in the coastal regions of Central America: Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Their culture, as the website "Latinoamericapop" explains, is rooted in the history of Africa, the indigenous peoples of Central America and European cultural influences, creating a rich cultural tradition with its own distinctive language, music and dance.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google