Mexican-American producer Delia Beatriz, known professionally as Debit, has once again proven her unique talent for re-contextualising historical audio. Her second album, Desaceleradas, continues her exploration of sound, this time focusing on the niche 1990s trend of cumbia rebajada.
Decelerating a Dance Genre
Where her previous work, The Long Count, used processed samples of ancient Maya flutes, Beatriz's latest record takes the upbeat, party-driven Afro-Latin dance genre of cumbia and applies the brakes. Cumbia rebajada is a dub-influenced style that involves slowing cumbia to a sludgy, hypnotic tempo, a technique popularised by DJ Gabriel Dueñez and his bootleg cassettes.
For Desaceleradas, Beatriz uses two of Dueñez's early releases as the foundational material for her sonic experiments. She doesn't merely slow the tracks down; she transforms them into a completely new auditory experience.
Forging a New Ambient Soundworld
The album exists in a fascinating space, drawing comparisons to the decaying loops of composer William Basinski and the slowed-down hip-hop aesthetic of DJ Screw. The familiar, shaker-rattling rhythms and synth syncopations of cumbia rebajada are stretched and warped into unrecognisable, ambient territory.
Tracks like La Ronda y el Sonidero and Vinilos Trasnacionales retain mere hints of cumbia's signature shuffle. Beatriz layers the original sounds with added tape hiss, reverb, and melodic warping, creating an ethereal and slightly unsettling soundscape. The result has been described as resembling nightmare fairground music or yearning drones, far removed from its dancefloor origins.
The Power of Slowness and Discomfort
This project is much more than an academic exercise in minimal BPMs. Beatriz's granular dissection of sound forces the listener to focus intently on the strangeness of every moment. Individual elements are isolated and magnified to powerful effect.
On Bootlegs, a single synth tone is stretched into a harsh, industrial distortion. Cholombia, MTY highlights the atonal dissonance within a slow-motion melody, while Los Balleza rings out with cacophonous reverb. The sounds are in a constant state of flux, creating a sensation akin to seasickness.
This deliberately uneasy quality is the antithesis of background meditative ambience. Instead, Beatriz performs a remarkable feat on Desaceleradas, demonstrating how slowness and subtlety can be harnessed to contain just as much dread and discomfort as the chaos of noise music.
Other Notable Releases This Month
Also making waves this month is Peruvian producer Alejandra Cárdenas (Ale Hop) with her debut album under her own name, A Body Like a Home. The record features frank spoken word poetry about growing up during Alberto Fujimori's dictatorship, set against impressionistic, autobiographical mood music.
Amsterdam-based group Nusantara Beat transform the Indonesian traditional style of keroncong into shimmering psychedelia on their self-titled debut. The album includes highlights like the synth-funk track Ular Ular and the catchy Kalangkang.
Finally, percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar offers There Is Beauty, There Already, a lively 40-minute suite of continuous drumming that serves as a love letter to rhythm itself, referencing everything from free jazz to konnakol phrasing.
