argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Semi-arepa, half marmite
Xalba Ramirez @xalbaram 2024ko maiatzaren 27a
Alai / Yuca / Oso polita, 2024.
Alai / Yuca / Oso polita, 2024.

How many things go unnoticed. Even if they move in niches, is each niche no longer too big? This EP by artist Alai comes from Tolosa with a perfectionist electronics like breakbeat, jungle, UK garage and aromatized house with an Afro-Caribbean flavor.

And what I thought was a discovery, well, I too late. Her long work out loud had already been published, a powerful album from the book Take Away the Blame of Cris Lizarraga. Yuca is shorter, but apparently more elaborate. There's nothing left to spare, maybe there's a song, percussion, battery and hyper-fine atmospheres. It's hard to relate the frenzied, broken pace in breakbeat to minimalism, but I think Yuca does it perfectly.

Alai is presented as half arepa, half marmite. And there's one of their peculiarities. The album has tried to reflect its Venezuelan roots and along with Xabier Lete we will find a series of Latin American rhythms and samples. However, samples are too short to talk about a real fusion, rather than a color paleta.La

electronic music is older than rock in Euskal Herria. However, tradition and school are developing a little more. So far I have always had the feeling that we are only making scant copies here compared to the international one. But they're creating strong own names. The other day I talked about Mattin Zeberio, who comes from Tolosa, and that Alai Ormazabal is going to be the strong name of the future, few doubts.

We still need to develop our own language. Will there be UK as a Basque equivalent to the style known as house? Will we create endemic beat? We just need to adjust the shot.