A Strangely Isolated Place
Ylia has a way with textures and a great depth of different approaches while still sounding unique to her. Favorite of 2023.
Favorite track: Ame Agari.
Ylia—aka Susana Hernández—had a remarkably productive 2020. In addition to releasing her debut album, Dulce Rendición, on Barcelona’s Paralaxe Editions, she penned compilation tracks for Lapsus Records, Hivern Discs, and Super Utu/Stars on Earth.
But professional success can be deceiving: The following year was, personally speaking, terrible. Her grandfather died. Her father died. Her cat died. And she ended a relationship. “That’s a lot of things all at once, no?” she says.
Her second album, Ame Agaru, is not necessarily a record of that year, but it is, she says, a response to those life events—a record of grief.
The new album is clearly a continuation of the ambient investigations of Ylia’s debut, but it differs in key ways. Where Dulce Rendición was exploratory and faintly cosmic, Ame Agaru—a Japanese phrase meaning, roughly, “the rain lifts”— captures a melancholy sense of stillness. And where her debut was largely electronic, on the new album, Ylia has folded in a number of acoustic elements, even when they are not recognizable as such. Her partner, Alejandro Lévar, lends fingerpicked acoustic guitar to the glowing dronescapes of “Todos los Cuerpos”; multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Tete Leal adds flutes, clarinet, and soprano saxophone to “Ame Agari”—or “after the rain”—which opens the album with a moment of contemplative calm, the kind that follows an extended deluge.
One track, the dub techno-influenced “Flowers in June,” grew out of Ylia’s live sets, but the rest are the fruit of improvisational sessions at home in Málaga, five minutes from the beach—jamming and then refining, searching for the ideal expression of a feeling as it was first captured. Searching for the spontaneity behind the stillness. In places, Ylia even incorporates piano, an instrument she has played since she was 10, yet has never included on one of her recordings before. For the most part on Ame Agaru, she seeks ways to fuse piano with synthesizers and electronic processes. But on the closing track, “El Único Adiós Posible,” she leaves us alone with the instrument in all its stark, unadorned beauty. It is a profoundly moving conclusion to an album defined by its economy of means and purity of expression: a cycle of life counted out in the passage of storm clouds and clearing skies.
credits
released July 7, 2023
Flute, piccolo flute, clarinet and soprano sax on "Ame Agari" by Tete Leal.
Acoustic guitar on "Todos los cuerpos" by Alejandro Lévar.
Composed and arranged by Susana Hernández in Málaga in 2021.
Mastered by Pedro Pina.
Cover artwork by José Quintanar.
Designed by Basora.
Dedicated to my father.
An album i liked so much, i bought it twice. Beautiful synth scapes that pull the listener into deep realms of undulating sonic shimmers and canyon shadows of dub techno. There are nods in the direction of Von Oswald's Channel but the approach is completely signature to Hoavi and it arrives with confidence. I could listen to 'Cosworth' on repeat for an hour and never tire. neglectsound
Michael Silver returns with more postmodern spa music, new-age compositions electrified with breakbeats, balearic interludes, and more. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 17, 2019
An exploration of the concept of “closeness,” the latest from SAH is full of soothing, richly textured electronic music. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 9, 2021
This album was featured on the May 30, 2023 episode of Foxy Digitalis Daily: https://foxydigitalis.zone/2023/05/30/foxy-digitalis-daily-5-30-23-%c2%b5-ziq/ Brad Rose