Peruvian artist Alejandra Cárdenas is usually known as Ale Hop, but for her most personal and cathartic work to date, she has used her birth name to wear her battle scars prouder than ever. Her forthcoming album, ‘A Body Like a Home’, is an autobiographical collection of songs and poems yearning for catharsis. As Alejandra says:
“I grew up under Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship, when a veil of hopelessness seemed to settle over everything. This is the backdrop of the album. The songs and poems trace the inevitable loop between private wounds – addiction, domestic violence, fractured intimacy – and Peru’s national scars, carved by colonialism. It’s not a straight story or a resolution. Writing and composing became a ritual of digging for meaning, into what’s buried, disguised, or renamed, until the body itself became a living archive.”
The album will have 13 tracks that use voice and distorted guitars to paint vivid and visceral soundscapes of fear, trauma, and resilience. On her latest single, ‘Inward’, guitars and stringed instruments boom, collide, refract, and entangle themselves in haunted melodies. It’s paired with a spooky music video that features a mother placing shells on her ears to enter a trance-like state and pull out her own spine. Not one for the dinner table perhaps, but it is incredibly memorable and elevates the uneasy nature that Alejandra Cárdenas provides. There are moments where she speaks poetry over the top of the dissonance like a disembodied spirit, and the combo of video and sound is like a performance art piece.
‘A Body Like a Home’ also comes with 15 poems to build out the world map and generational landscape that Alejandra Cárdenas is moving through. Elements of Peruvian folklore, political battlefields, and domestic violence on one hand, and the poems lay these ideas over the top of everyday objects, as if they have watched the passage of time like gatekeepers.
I’m excited to dive into the full release when it comes out on 14th November. You can pre-order ‘A Body Like a Home’ on Bandcamp, and visit alehophop.com for more details about all of Alejandra Cárdenas’ projects.
Support Higher Plain Music
Higher Plain Music is part of the Higher Plain Network – a one-man indie media project. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. In return, you’ll receive additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and free downloads. You can also donate using PayPal. Sharing the website helps too or using the affiliate buy now links on reviews. I receive a few pence per Amazon sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. I’d love to make this a full-time media network and your support can make that happen. Thank you.
Discover more from Higher Plain Music
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
