You may know Alejandra Cárdenas primarily as a musician – the Peruvian artist, now living in Berlin and pursuing an academic career in parallel, works under the alias Ale Hop. She became known through various collaborations, including her project Agua Dulce with percussionist Laura Robles, where they mutate Afro-Peruvian rhythms, electric guitar and e-cajón into pulsating lo-fi noise. Another example is her work with Congolese guitarist Titi Bakorta, which resulted in the album Mapambazuko.
With A Body Like Home, she follows a different, more personal path. Across 13 songs and 15 poems, she looks back at the traumatic history of her homeland – a history shaped by colonialism and racism – and traces the ways in which it has inscribed itself into the bodies of its people.
Cárdenas grew up in Peru in the 1990s, under the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori – her memories are accordingly disturbed and disturbing. Cascades of associative text sit at the centre of the tracks, underscored by minimalist, foreboding sound collages in which guitar timbres intermingle with a piercing violin. The latter is played by Gibrana Cervantes, a composer and improviser from Mexico. Fragments of Peruvian folklore and meandering, often colliding melodies bind personal scars to collective wounds rooted in history. The result is a set of striking pieces with a deeply autobiographical foundation.
