Máscaras

Mas Aya, aka Brandon Valdivia, is a Toronto-based Canadian-Nicaraguan producer and multi-instrumentalist known in that city for his work with left-field local bands – including the much-lauded US Girls – as well as theatre companies. Máscaras are ‘masks’ and while the cover art references the headgear used in indigenous Nicaraguan ceremonies, there’s a sense here that the MC can’t quite decide which to wear while at the mixing desk – or twiddling a thumb piano. The album comprises six longish, rather shapeless tracks (five to eight minutes) – synth-led, all drums programmed – that splice together ideas from trap, hip-hop, reggae, Enya and Warp label-style bleeps, and layer on to this loops and chants that come from deep at the folk roots. The final outcome is an ambient record, more global than earthy, despite Valdivia taking out a quena and tin whistle to give suggestions of ‘live’ performance. The tracks merge somewhat into a dirgey-droney, manufactured sort of half hour, somewhere between after-party chillout and supermarket check-out. Colombian-American singer Lido Pimienta’s appearance on ‘Tiemp Ahora’ is in the same vein as the rest; there seems to be no space in this aural cosmos for anything as ordinary as lyrics or raw emotion. Fairly fascinating, over one listen, but replays deliver ever diminishing dividends. Massage practitioners have a new alternative to waves or whale song.