Negra
ZZK Records Presents Indus’s Negra
A record born from the earth that belongs to the night
Indus’ recent live sets have been wowing crowds at MUTEK in Montreal and Nuits Sonores in Lyon. Four years after releasing their debut record, Indus are back in 2024 with Negra, their second album. This record explores the essence of the night through dance, seduction and mystery, while paying homage to Colombian amphibious cultures and the land as that place that has seen us moving and that we always return to.
With these ten songs Barranquilla producer Óscar Alford, along with Andres Mercado and a select group of collaborators, builds a bridge between the sounds and stories of the Pacific and the Caribbean, bringing together territories like a river running through them and connecting them. Óscar says that on this record “there’s this confluence of various cultural universes, on the one hand there’s the traditional music of the coast and river areas, there are various maestros who collaborated on the record who brought that flavor, also there’s electronica which is a universal language, and even hip hop and more urban genres like dembow.”
The record kicks off with “Deja,” a ritual of initiation, a galactic, synthetic entrance into a place of plenty, a journey to the ethereal and the night. It’s followed, like light and guide, by the song “Alfa Indi,” with Gamero singer Nelda Piña, a release of electronic sounds evoking creation in all its senses.
The night is an excuse for and a generator of desire, seduction and flirting in “Candela tu Trá,” in collaboration with Tomás Llerena, grandson of the legendary Petrona Martínez. The earth is evident in tracks like “Canción del muerto,” homage to the marimba maestro Gualajo, with his brother Pacho Torres and Bogotá rapper N. Hardem, a song that could be a farewell ritual and tribute to the land as the place to which we always return, one that holds the history of those who walked that land and left their mark on it. We hear this in “Corre Cimarrón” with Ka Oddun, portraying the journeys of fleeing enslaved ancestors as they tried to survive until they reached the palenque, a place of freedom.
Negra explores the mysticism of the night and the cosmos within the Colombian musical tradition. A dialog between root rhythms, voices and synths with beats oscillating between techno-champeta, afro-tech and future-dembow. With this record Indus comes across as one of the most versatile acts on the Latin American scene, especially in the way they reinterpret ancestral music and resignify its sound.