Lucrecia Dalt Wants to Stay Like This Forever

The day Lucrecia Dalt held an advance listening session at Brooklyn’s Public Records felt netherworldly: a freak downpour had drenched the streets and caused a flood warning, turning the air thick and the twilight sky an eerie grey-green. It was an ominous mood to listen to A Danger to Ourselves, the experimental musician’s inventive seventh album, on which percussion sounds melodic, sound sounds sculpted, and her voice growls and coos about big topics like love and freedom and release. Dalt wore an oversized grey suit and yellow-tinted shades over her optical glasses, and was in a joyous mood, hugging fans and comrades—including percussionist Alex Lázaro and bassist Cyrus Campbell, who played on the album—despite everyone being simultaneously soaked with rain and sweating from the torpid air.

A few weeks earlier, Dalt’s heart had stopped for eight seconds during an epileptic seizure. That same day, she released the single “Caes,” which had been inspired by the concept of freefall. Since then, she told me, she’d been experiencing life as if in technicolor; being so close to death had amplified the state of living. Candlelight flickered in the faces of the rapt crowd as we listened to A Danger to Ourselves on the hi-fi sound system, which brought into focus how meticulously captured each vocal flick and marimba hit was, in part thanks to her sound mixer and partner, the British musician David Sylvian. Afterwards, in front of the audience, we spoke about the making of the album, how her environment influences her music, and how her near-death experience has affected her consciousness. An edited portion of our conversation follows.

Hearing Things: That was so profoundly beautiful and it sounded so much better here than at my house. What was the experience of listening back to A Danger to Ourselves like for you? 

Lucrecia Dalt: Trying to be in all the consciousness of everyone here. It’s very bizarre, because I’m listening to the work, it’s finished and I cannot do anything about it, but I can’t help but to place myself in all the heads and try to think what that might feel like for someone’s first time listening.

Could you talk about the process of writing it—you started when you were touring for your last album, 2022’s ¡Ay!, is that correct?

Kind of—well, especially lyrics, ideas, thoughts, poetry. It was also the starting of a relationship and that prompted a lot of ambitious wording. And then when I relocated to New Mexico, I started to put it all together. Also, Alex Lázaro played drums, but he was also very generous to give me a folder with lots of loops and loose ideas he had about percussion that I think somehow came about with the development of how I, with this record, started to become on stage—a lot of Flexatone and a lot of Rotatone. For example, “Cosa Rara” started with a drum loop.

At that point do you already have the lyrics, or are you just trying to vibe out?

Every song is different. “Cosa Rara” was one of those that I just opened that folder and the drum loop prompted the whole thing. Alex can embed melody in percussion in such a way that it’s just very easy for me just to sit there and spend enough time and things start to come out. Then I had Cyrus Campbell playing bass—it was kind of a rough idea of what the bass should be and then he added something to it, and then David Sylvian, my partner, added guitars to it so the structure started to form in many places slowly and then it becomes a song and you’re like yay, okay. 

Surprise! There are many layers and surprises and really unexpected sounds all over this album. Were you thinking about that?

Yeah. I guess I was like, “Is it possible to make something that is slightly pop but has weird sounds?”—sounds that are pleasing to my ears like all these bendies and things that I die for. I was like, how much can I hold it without the usual elements that we are accustomed to: keyboard or guitar. Those are there but are kind of ornamental. The main structure is sustained by drums and bass, and then the voice and the details come after that. 

I'm interested in this idea of drums as melody. What made you pursue that?

In the past when I didn’t have a percussionist or drummer—I love rhythm, I’m from Colombia and I’m very connected to that visceral feeling of a drum. When I was 20-something, I wanted to explore rhythm in a way that I wasn’t using either drums or a drum machine. I bought a Moogerfooger back in the day, which is a resonant step-filter dynamic thing that you can program, and I would process my guitar through it. The sensation of rhythm plus sound plus resonance started there, and then meeting Alex and feeling all this compatibility in precisely that—trying to define the usual sound of the drums that we are programmed to have—was very exciting to me, because it was like, OK, we’re speaking the same language here.

There's so much depth to the sound structure that it feels like sound sculpture at points. How do you know when your sculpture is finished?

It’s very hard. I put down very hard deadlines for me to say, “Okay, I'm going to finish in October.” Then October comes and it’s not finished, and I get depressed [laughs]. Actually, I was pretty good at saying, “I’m going to work until more or less this time,” and then I gave it to David, who mixed it. He helped me understand what I was missing in the production so that it became this final thing.

Some tracks were more finished in that sense. For other tracks, he proposed a little bit more of depth, detailing so that it becomes this more open thing. I love records in which dynamics are important. So I feel he captured that pretty well to make it like, you know, moving in all ways.

Did working in New Mexico affect how it sounded?

Yes, definitely. Not only because of the vastness of the space, but this is the very first time in my life, for health reasons and also because I could financially be in one place, just working on music without doing anything else. And this is the first time I allowed myself that space, because in the past I would be touring and traveling while I was recording. This is the first record that, every day, I wake up with coffee and work for 12 hours or something, alone most of the time, until I have collaborators and then recordings and then mates and so on.

That process definitely affected the detailing of it. With the previous one, I was all over the place and I was doing like, seven projects at the same time. That affects how you work on a project, and I loved dedicating all this time to this one. It’s something that I just want to do all the time now, if I can afford it. 

I studied civil engineering and I was working at a geotechnical company—only for two years, but I managed to gather some information there and some fascination for geology. And Colombia is a pretty insane place—I come from the mountains where there are volcanoes and ash and that forms the fantastic coffee we have. I was kind of fascinated by time: the vastness of it, or how, when you think about geology, the scale changes so much. That prompted a lot of conceptual ideas. And being in New Mexico is just breathtaking. It’s getting there in my body for sure. 

I know that you were a little bit more emotional in this album, too. Could you talk about the process of getting into your emotions and being more out-there with it?

I think it’s always kind of a fear to talk about personal stuff—or, I always felt it that way. I always felt vulnerable to speak about my own issues. And maybe because of that, and also my nerdy part, in the past I wanted to use more like a very heavy concept and rely on that to be able to create. It was a tool.

But in this one—it’s definitely part of the relationship that was being born during that time, with someone who is also very sensitive, to let yourself go in the sound, in the feeling, and allow it to be. 

It’s also that time of life: context and age and having toured and almost collapsed and then coming back to life from another angle and trying to be calm and work from the quietude and necessity of like, wanting to be as sincere as I can be with myself with what I'm feeling about what is happening. And bring it to the world in that way.

You released the song “caes” and went to the hospital for a terrible seizure on the same day, where you almost died. With “caes,” you said that you were inspired by the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta and also Evelyn McHale. Could you talk a little bit about that?

The song started with the idea of thinking about—I mean, being proximate to someone that is more aware of death, but also death as a transition or transmutation process of consciousness or whatever that is.

I was thinking about “changing status” or changing from A to B. When I was living in Barcelona, there was a print that said, “When you decide to jump, you're already falling.” Those things started to combine in my brain, and then I saw the Siluetas by Mendieta, especially the ones on the floor. Back then, I didn't know about her death—I didn't know how, in a way, her final piece is herself, or that's my interpretation of it in the song. And then I found that picture of Evelyn McHale, which is known as “the most beautiful suicide.” And I was thinking about beauty, art, death—trying to think about those processes a little bit more. 

And then I had a seizure and my heart stopped. For two days afterwards, I was in such a high that I thought I actually died. I was really thinking, “Everything is just so incredibly beautiful and overwhelming, wow, that maybe I actually died, and this is the afterlife.” I started to have coincidences that I was like, “What's happening?”

Releasing “caes” that day was coincidental timing.

I was going to the hospital literally when it was being released. And I was like, “Oh, but I need to make a post. Let me do the post” [laughs]. The nurse was like, “What are you doing?” And I’m like, “I need to make a post! My song is out today!”

Your voice is otherworldly on this album, and sounds a bit different from your past work. 

I feel like I’m only learning about my voice and starting to feel comfortable. It’s been a very hard subject for me, so much so that on certain albums I’ve said, “I’m not going to sing anymore, this is too hard.” It’s a big suffering. I remember with Alex, recording ¡Ay!, being like, “I can’t do this! It was just not coming together!” I wish I could be one of those singers like Scott Walker, who can push the voice, but I’m learning and taking it very seriously. I practice and try to accept whatever is going on here. With singing, you’re fully exposed, and you’re subject to so many things, like the weather, humidity, and stuff like that. And emotions—if you’ve cried that day, or if you had an orgasm. It changes everything. 

I think about my path all the time. “Will I ever have the chance to really feel what it feels like to perceive the world from [someone else’s] point of view?” I think about that all the time. But it’s also very much in my mind since that episode at the hospital. I feel like something got a little bit rewired and I'm experiencing life a little bit more intensely. I hope I’m going to stay like this forever.