alasVALS (Buenos Aires-London, 2004) is a transoceanic band with an ambient flavour; a warm sound that penetrates a lonely space slowly transforming it into a inhabitable, hopeful place.
They blend the cold winds of the UK with the warmth of Latin America.
The band was formed in 2004, even though Silvia Demetilla (Vocals /songs/ keyboard/ synth/ laptop) had already written some of the songs before that. In that year she started recording with David Aguirre (Programming/ piano/ keyboard/ synth/ arrangements), who she met thanks to their singing teacher.
Silvia moved to London in 2001 and became the lead singer of Lautrec, a band admired by David and this became one of the first links between them before deciding to collaborate, despite the distance. alasVALS music is undeniably ethereal and atmospheric, something which gives it a totally contemporary taste, full of trip hop, folk, and even classical elements. It gives a sense of uprooting and loss but with a will for constant searching, just like something deeply Hispanic lost in outer space. Lonely but warm, just like a lost Latin American trying to find themselves in the squalid streets of London.
The fact is that distance plays a very important role in this new –electronically gentle– music, which has impressed both Latin American and local listeners. Distance, or estrangement, then, has a curious effect: a kind of returning to one’s roots but from a whole different perspective, adapted to an ever surprising reality, full of unexpected novelties. The traveller is able to grasp whatever gushes up from deep within at the same time as incorporating every detail from the surface into his own inner universe. He becomes a strange being. A mixture of the previous person he was originally with another, immersed in a bizarre place that little by little becomes a familiar one he may call his own.
That’s what alasVALS is about: evoking uninhabitable landscapes suddenly bringing them close up, a kind of gentle uprooting that says goodbye to sadness. “Cisne mecánico”, for example, is one of the songs that astonished us not just because of its depth and texture, but also thanks to its theme. It’s a hymn to survival and adaptability, about the constant temptation to return and resign that pursues the one who emigrates far from home. A song full of strength, it’s not a coincidence then that Silvia wrote it in Kingston, on a day in which she found the secret of happiness.
Written by Bernardo Gamboa for Cantartica.com