On February 16th, Colombian composer and sound artist Lucrecia Dalt will be giving her first U.S. performance since 2014 at Issue Project Room, in Downtown Brooklyn.
Dalt calls on her training as a former geotechnical engineer to create hypnotic and poetic improvisations, fusing a sense of time and space, earth and breath. Sounding like something between Laurie Anderson and early Aphex Twin, she mixes performance art, electronic ambient music, and sound improvisation, and, drawing on her background in Geology, the music often feels like it’s coming directly out of the earth and dirt we stand on. The songs unfold slowly, and the poetic musings flow in and out of earthy pulses, meandering like dreams. Using traditional Colombian and South American rhythms, which contrast beautifully with the futuristic electronic sounds, the introspective and heady poetry and concepts disappear behind a mysteriously engaging and organic tapestry. Her live show will straddle the line between electronic Spaceman/Rocket Scientist imagery and primal intuitive improvisations.
Bringing music like this into frenetic downtown Brooklyn can feel schizophrenic and in deep contrast to the exploding Brooklyn skyline. How does one settle into allowing the music to transform oneself, slowly and subtly, to another plane in today’s smartphone-centric lifestyle?
“The set cares for dynamics, for space awareness, there are moments of almost silence, if the room and the audience allows for that.” But this performance at Issue Project Room will be perfectly set to bring the audience on such a journey.
ISSUE is one of a handful of spaces left in this city ruthlessly dedicated to the new and the experimental. Founded in 2003 in the Lower East Side by Suzanne Fiol and Marc Ribot, it existed in the last days when experimental music spots littered the landscape of Lower Manhattan. ISSUE now rises as a beacon of unending imaginative programming and support. Called “The Carnegie Hall for the avant-garde” by the NY Times, it took several venue changes, as rents continued their barrage on the arts throughout the boroughs, before they settled on the current venue at 22 Boerum Place, where they are 8 years into a 20-year rent-free lease.
