Tara Minton creates a world outside of what we’re used to,
laces it with Mexican flavours and invites us in. She was, clearly overwhelmed
by her first visit to Mexico City in April 2023 that it drove her to return 3
months later, borrow a harp, immerse herself in the City’s culture and write
this album in a two week blaze of energy. Lyrically strong, albeit subdued in
performance, the album works through allusion and sinuous rhythms to create
moods and emotions and it’s these dark atmospheric moments that give this music
its subtle power
We open with the opening title track delivered as a whispered, seductive poem over a slithering, insidious, pulsing bass line. The lyric is full of temptation and the most romantic, intoxicating, fantastical dreams of escape through a Faustian bargain with a particularly Machiavellian devil. Gorodi adds piercing trumpet to substantially raise the temperature. If you wondered what sultry sounded like, here it is! El Colibri, by way of contrast is much more of a song of daylight; a multi-layered flowing piece of sunshine with Minton’s harp doing most of the dancing whilst wordless vocals swoop and soar; an increasingly forceful invitation to hip mobility. Iztapalapa is snatches of a quiet, intense fury intermingled with more elegant, desperate passages that seem to be feeling for something out of reach. A desperate romantic yearning infuses Minton’s voice on Cariño before a beautiful trumpet solo, little more than a breeze, adds to the romance.
