ZZK Records’ offshoot imprint AYA Records debuted last year with the release of Nuevo Noise highlight “Sendero del Monte,” a track by Ecuadorian artist Mateo Kingman. It was a neat introduction to AYA’s mission: the reinterpretation of folk sounds through the lens of hip-hop, electronic music, and beyond. AYA has also birthed EVHA, a crew of like-minded musicians comprised of Renata Nieto, Alejandro Mendoza, Sebastián Schmiedl, and Kingman himself. Together, the four artists set out to marry technology and art with tradition.
EVHA, or El Viejo Hombre de los Andes, is set to drop their self-titled debut album on October 6 through AYA. On it, they dig deep into the folkloric music from the Ecuadorian Andes and Amazon to find inspiration for the album’s 13 tracks. Marimba arpeggios flourish alongside sanjuanito, pasillo
The second single off El Viejo Hombre de los Andes, “Caminar a Donde Sea,” is an outstanding reinvention of Afro-Ecuadorian rhythms, embellished with an army of synth melodies and flourishes, and layers of Nieto’s soft voice, all tightly intertwined to generate a stunning cinematic fantasy. Its music video, premiering today on Remezcla, is a rush of abstract, black-and-white flashes and body parts, only interrupted by kaleidoscopic sparks in blue and green. Just like the music, the video represents the confluence of the natural (skin) and the synthetic (computer-generated textures).
El Viejo Hombre de los Andes is out October 6 via AYA Records.