Review Summary: The magic of nature and ambient from Columbian mountains! The best since before Grouper
Verónica Cian’s
resembrarme bosque is a debut LP to remember, seeping and probing the soil and opening its every pore to a fresh day. If it’s ambient music, it follows very real roots and peaks: this album was recorded in Colombia’s mountain range Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta with hydrophones, contact mics, and field recorders to capture the voices of rivers, insects, and wind. These are supported with folklike guitar and synthetic instrumentation. The result is a sonic ecosystem that feels alive, damp, and breathing. It takes us back to a time when Grouper presented us with the world as we had always secretly known it, sat cross-legged on a shag rug in a permanently rained upon house. Now Verónica Cian is the new master of this sound, and the water is coming from inside the house.
The album opens with two tracks that set the tone with tactile wonder, dripping water and elemental textures, but it’s "pluma" that flexes Cian's songwriter skills and casts a deep spell. It’s vocal-led and emotionally precise, a moment where she steps forward from the fog and shows her hand as a true folk dreamer. With more material in this vein, Verónica Cian will be well on her way to topping Gracie Abrams or Ichiko Aoba as the singer-songwriter of 2020.
But
resembrarme bosque isn’t just about songwriting. It’s too full of atmosphere, transformation and communion with nature for that. The insect sound collage ambience of “pasar la tormenta”, matched with goddesslike spoken word on “selva abrázame en la noche”, suggests that she may be vying to claim a greater crown than that of singer-songwriter of the decade. These tracks are steeped in nature, and Cian’s voice becomes part of the landscape, not a guide through it. When she drops a gated snare and magicks us through surprise bedroom pop closer on "el bosque es agua", we see her for the first time as an amputated human cutout. It is an arresting finish.
As all things are interconnected, so too is ambient music an extension of nature. Verónica Cian makes herself resemble a log on the extraordinary album cover, and there it is. Artistry. Is she absorbed by the forest or does she absorb it? The moss, the bark, the stillness: it’s all part of the sound. "el bosque es agua"'s closing mantra (quiero recordar el bosque para llover.) is a reminder of this unison, that that memory is hydrology, that healing is erosion. The production, handled largely by Cian herself, is raw and tactile. Daniel Correa contributes to the final mix and mastering, conveying the organic feel without sanding down the edges.
There’s no climax here, no resolution. We drift into the undergrowth. Cian invites us to listen as she lets the forest speak.
resembrarme bosque feels like a return to the listeners we as humans, starry-eyed and forager-minded, were once meant to be
