Halo

Description

Juana Molina is a benevolent witch. Look at the cover of this new album: a bone is watching us! And when a bone is watching us, it is the entire history of paleontology that gazes upon us. The bone is the sign of having been, it is the ultimate remnant, after the passage of vultures, hyenas, rodents, and worms. Ancient popular legends held that poorly buried bones were responsible for the "luz mala" (the 'bad light', known to us as will-o'-the-wisp or feufollet), that strange halo that floats above the ground and terrifies nighttime travelers. But Juana Molina is a benevolent witch, and the bone that concerns us is neither sinister nor threatening, it simply wants to reconcile us with its kind. It is both mischievous and serious, ironic, imaginative, and rather magical—exactly like Juana's music. Halo is Juana Molina's seventh album, marking a new step in the adventurous path she has been charting for many years. The twelve tracks of Halo are filled with hypnotic rhythms that seem to draw their energy from ancient rituals; from timbral explorations and ever-moving soundscapes; from enigmatic lyrics that often address witchcraft, premonitions, and dreams, always used as metaphors translating emotional states; from melodies, of course, carried by voices that sometimes stray from words and meanings to be reduced to phonemes or onomatopoeias.