Lorena Quintanilla has been know for Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, her gazey psychedelic band alongside Alberto González, and J. Zunz is her avant garde electronica solo project whose new album, Hibiscus, is due out August 21st, 2020 through Rocket Recordings.
Moving through minimal elecronica, film music, ambient and psychedelia, the sound of J. Zunz is very much elusive and defies conventional description.
“It is hard to describe any record as they keep unfolding to me in time” she admits herself. “Now it is almost a year since I recorded it. What I know is that I wrote the album during a personal crisis inside and a political crisis outside. After being profoundly hurt by a person I trusted but also by the structures outside of me. I wrote it during sleepless nights filled with overwhelming thoughts and feelings.”
Opening track and lead single Y comes with an absolutely jaw-dropping and riveting visual directed by Quintanilla and John O'Carroll, based on the work of the prolific Portuguese artist, Helena Almeida.
Lorena comments: "The video was inspired by the artwork of the great Helena Almeida. It is about giving movement to some of her photographs and maybe imagine a story in between them. Abstract enough to give space to any interpretation. Sometimes it is necessary to make a video about violence because looking at it directly is unbearable. We make metaphors of violence because nobody wants to accept that every day we make a woman suffer."
Although very much intense and uneasy, there's a certain quality to Y which makes an immaculate match to the video's bold aesthetics. Lorene describes further her artistic approach and aim:
“I remember I was reading a biography of John Cage and that book detonated something in me. The author was referring to the influence of Buddhism and meditation, and modern artists like Sonia Delaunay, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, Duchamp, futurism. I was very charged with ideas.
“I didn’t want these songs to sound vulnerable. I wanted the songs to be everything I wasn’t at that moment: strong and fearless.”
Artist photo by Sofia Ruesga
Video directed by Lorena Quintanilla & John O'Carroll
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