I first encountered Lucrecia Dalt in 2013. She was supporting Julia Holter at the small but perfectly formed Cube Microplex in Bristol. She performed a short but attention-grabbing set of modernist loops, grungy bass and dream pop vocals. As good as it was, it’s safe to say she’s come a long way in the intervening twelve years, carving out a space at the experimental forefront of electronic music with her unique blend of synth-based composition, Latin American music and wide-ranging lyrical concerns. She has embraced soundtrack work, sound art installations, field recordings and collaborations with various leading lights of the avant-garde, and her last studio album – 2022’s ¡Ay! – was a kind of sci-fi bolero rock opera.
But what struck me most about that 2013 encounter was Dalt’s presence. She commanded the stage effortlessly, and seemed to be in full and confident control of her art. While her output may have evolved, the presence remains, and infuses everything she does. A Danger To Ourselves dials back the high-concept Latin futurism in favour of a more personal, sometimes confessional, lyrical approach. These songs began life as jottings made on the ¡Ay! tour, and developed into a coherent cycle about the physical longing and emotional connection of new love.
A measure of Dalt’s upward trajectory is her ability to pull in some heavyweight collaborators. Opening track cosa rara features David Sylvian, who lends an oaky spoken-word outro to a crisp and propulsive, yet spine-tinglingly close song celebrating the strangeness of attraction. Sylvian shares production duties with Dalt throughout the album, and the pair achieve a precise, malleable sound built on Cyrus Campbell’s springy bass lines and Alex Lázaro’s percussive loops. Other collaborators include singer-songwriter Juana Molina (her vocals helping to give the common reader a sinister but bouncy vibe), and Camille Mandoki on caes, a vertiginous experiment in call-and-response vocals that morphs into an ardent, darkly passionate slab of dream pop.
Darkness is the order of the day elsewhere too, with mala sangre picking apart the murkier, damper recesses of human relationships. The production is suitably claustrophobic, but like many songs here, it changes in its final moments, opening out, as if giving in to desire. The slow-burning stelliformia is extraordinary: it feels not just like a tribute to the human body, but as if it should somehow be performed inside our blood vessels and organs. It’s extraordinary, alluring, and a bit creepy.
But Dalt has a breezier side too: amorcito caradura sees her reach back – if only for a minute or so – to the influence of the acoustic folk music of her native Colombia, while no death no danger is by turns dark and playful, and agüita con sal is defined by the complex but quick-fingered interplay between rhythm and melody. On acéphale Dalt seems like she could evolve into an unadulterated pop singer at any moment, but thankfully she keeps things weird.
The slower, more deliberate songs like hasta el final recall the twilight-hued trip-hop of Portishead, but with an organic undertow of bass that frequently rises to the surface. Dalt’s vision is essentially a human one, and the instruments on her songs dance a very human dance, not least on divina, which has hints of smoky piano jazz amid the choppy percussion. At times – most notably on the first half of el exceso según cs – she strays into the welcoming territory of Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits, complete with what sounds like a marimba (and there’s something oddly Waits-like about Sylvian’s vocals on the opening track, too), but for the most part these songs sound like no-one else.
The key ingredient of A Danger to Ourselves is depth. It is an album of unfathomable musical depths, but perhaps more importantly, it is an album about depth of feeling, the abyss from which desire springs like a liquid flame. Dalt gives herself over completely to exploring this depth, and the singular work of art that emerges is as detailed and as unexpected as any treasure.
A Danger to Ourselves (September 5th, 2025) RVNG Intl.
Order: https://lnk.to/rvngnl118