In 2022, Lucrecia Dalt made it onto HHV’s year-end list with »¡Ay!«. This year, she might deserve the same honour again. I say might, because it’s no easy question by which standards one should judge »A Danger to Ourselves«. The previous album was a cinematic blend of electroacoustic music and Latin American genres. It was brilliant because it fused those elements without sacrificing what makes each genre alluring on its own. If »¡Ay!« was a homage to Dalt’s homeland, Colombia, »A Danger to Ourselves« is un-homely.
On the level of instrumentation, it dispenses almost entirely with melody. That makes the record colder, more abstract – not unlike Dalt’s collaboration with Aaron Dilloway. Yet here, for the first time, Dalt achieves a frightening sonic clarity. In an interview, she explains: »I wanted it to be an album that explores rhythm in more complexity. More polyrhythms, weirder, more ways to work with the drums.« Notice her phrasing: not “more complex rhythms,” but “rhythm in more complexity.” Of course, at times the drums fire on all cylinders (as on the Juana Molina collaboration »the common reader«). But they stand out most when they hold back.
Combined with Dalt’s devastatingly beautiful »Latin American« vocals, they sound like a threnody dredged from the icy waters of modernity. In their inhumanity lies something profoundly intimate. »A Danger« may be one of those rare albums whose truth every judgment misses.
