Lido Pimienta

Canada-based Colombian artist and musician Lido Pimienta is one of those brave, unique souls who encourages you to open your heart more just by being who they are.
lido pimienta color

Lido Pimienta Photo: myspace.com

Her detailed drawings and folk-art inspired paintings mirror her intensely personal and intensely political music. The music combines the enchanting intimacy of Juana Molina’s fragile electronic soundscapes with the handmade art pop of The Blow, and something punk — like Suicide getting in touch with their twee side.

Her critically lauded 2010 Spanish-language debut album Color, is like a beautiful (and highly accessible) art installation made from ordinary craft supplies and stuff people keep around the house. It’s a bright world of rhythm and melody that you just want to walk around in and contemplate.

Michel Gondry and Miranda July should collaborate on a musical film about Pimienta’s life, but Ms. Pimienta should definitely do the soundtrack. Actually, the lady could probably make the movie herself too. And probably will. But that would still be a pretty cool three-way collaboration.

Like those two artists who make movies, Pimienta’s work has a deceptively simple quality. Its unassuming aesthetic conceals its strength. When Color comes to an end, you’ve been through an experience — one that’s potentially healing and transformative. It’s good, moving, big-hearted music and the whole world would be a much better place if we were all issued alarm clocks wired to play her song “Caminos” instead of some horrible bleating machine noise in the morning.

At least it would be a more colorful place. And isn’t that the same thing?

Listen to the entire album here and see what it does for your world. Consider starting with the track “Selectiva Memoria.” - MTV

Capullo, a Mexican electronic-music trio, recently teamed up with the Colombian-Canadian , a visual artist and musician who became a Latin Alternative darling when she released her debut EP Color in 2010. The result of their collaboration is the romantic and buoyant "A quien amas en realidad es a mi," or "Who you really love is me," from Capullo's new album, Testigos del fin del mundo (Witnesses of the end of the world). The song's title may sound hyperbolic, but that's because both Capullo and Pimienta share a common affinity for pubescent angst and, among other things, old-school Instant Messenger — the most apt vehicle to express all that teenage emotional vertigo.

"Mom tells me not to fall in love so hard, but I'm sure that you're the one for me," Pimienta sings in exuberant Spanish. Such confident words come from a sweet kid whose clothes, we later learn, are all secondhand — except his underwear, which he's sure are new. He's deep in puppy love and not interested in his mother's warnings, nor the fact that his beloved is about to leave the country.

Adolescent crushes are a funny thing: They almost always go wrong, and the crusher often exaggerates, with characteristic blundering, just how mutual his feelings are. But is there any love more pure, more fully felt, more risk-taking than the teenage variety? In spite of Pimienta's youthful vocals and Capullo's upbeat playing style, the self-congratulatory refrain of "The one you really love is me" contains an undercurrent of doubt: that gnawing sense that perhaps the one she really loves isn't him, but someone else; someone more popular, or better at sports. But the party must go on, it seems, as it certainly does in most Latin pop — except, this time, with a palpable sense of doom. - NPR Music

Capullo, a Mexican electronic-music trio, recently teamed up with the Colombian-Canadian , a visual artist and musician who became a Latin Alternative darling when she released her debut EP Color in 2010. The result of their collaboration is the romantic and buoyant "A quien amas en realidad es a mi," or "Who you really love is me," from Capullo's new album, Testigos del fin del mundo (Witnesses of the end of the world). The song's title may sound hyperbolic, but that's because both Capullo and Pimienta share a common affinity for pubescent angst and, among other things, old-school Instant Messenger — the most apt vehicle to express all that teenage emotional vertigo.

"Mom tells me not to fall in love so hard, but I'm sure that you're the one for me," Pimienta sings in exuberant Spanish. Such confident words come from a sweet kid whose clothes, we later learn, are all secondhand — except his underwear, which he's sure are new. He's deep in puppy love and not interested in his mother's warnings, nor the fact that his beloved is about to leave the country.

Adolescent crushes are a funny thing: They almost always go wrong, and the crusher often exaggerates, with characteristic blundering, just how mutual his feelings are. But is there any love more pure, more fully felt, more risk-taking than the teenage variety? In spite of Pimienta's youthful vocals and Capullo's upbeat playing style, the self-congratulatory refrain of "The one you really love is me" contains an undercurrent of doubt: that gnawing sense that perhaps the one she really loves isn't him, but someone else; someone more popular, or better at sports. But the party must go on, it seems, as it certainly does in most Latin pop — except, this time, with a palpable sense of doom. - NPR Music

Colombian darling Lido Pimienta would qualify as one of those true shining definitions of artistic truism. Her artiste qualities as a singer, writer and illustrator not only speak for themselves, they outshine their own spectrum. Lido currently resides in Canada, where she studies Art Criticism-Curation and forms part of the Tiny Box collective, in short, she’s surrounded by color and to everyone’s luck, she’s aware of it. Color EP marks her first official release, an incredibly confident breakthrough album that's already on the shortlist for best EP of the year.

The structure of the EP is simple, eight delightful songs divinely connected to Lido’s vivid persona, all envisioned and executed for the senses. The album’s first single “Mueve” is bombastic in a supreme league (you know, up there with T.I.’s “What You Know”). Her gifted vocals direct to a very ambitious song on cosmopolitanism and inner strength/choice. “La vibracion te guiara... y la musica te calma y sana”, it goes beyond its words to literally loop music from one state to another, and from one purpose to another. It’s that endless sense of possibilities that make “Mueve” such a comforting piece, that ability of connecting to any of its layers.

While listening to the culturally unifying intro “Humano”, one can’t help but to feel a certain healing process through the vocal’s smooth pacing and its occasional encounters with desperation. “Aqui Conmigo” serves great as a pastiche of pop music, resembling Javiera Mena’s “Perlas” and even Jay Z’s “Empire state of the mind” in the way it spills into space and comes back as she sings “explosiones de besos te voy a dar.”

Color EP goes from suggestive to a strong rampage of political concern; luckily, it stays on its premise of placing color as the main negotiator of its topics. This explains why the political reflecting songs are enclosed with Colombian folklore. “La Minga” and “La Rata” are particularly attached to Colombia's tropical bravura. “La Minga” forefronts the campesino anxiety to keep its land, confronting the 21st century cubicle worker along the way. "La Rata" is a heart punch to corruption and our participation with 'the system.'

The rock edge and march-stream in “Progreso” is in a whole new league, a touching chant for Colombia’s progression towards peace, “viviendo en tinieblas, no mas… es nuestro progreso lleno de bondad, llegando hacia la cima, todo el amor ya sin sufrimiento, Colombia vendra hacia la paz." Later, it cheers "no fallara! no fallara! Colombia vendra hacia la paz!" The closing English-language track “Freedom” is a crystallized and delicate, “defend your freedom.” Lido understands composition and art as an ongoing stimulating medium (‘the triangular prism’). Having said that, her songs display as much personality as musicality. A stunning debut whether in chops or its entirety.
- Club Fonograma

Lido Pimienta has probably never met a color she didn't like, and probably never will. The same goes for music, which this Colombian artist based in Toronto also visualizes in a chromatic circle.

From performing ABBA at home as a child in her native Barranquilla in front of an audience of her parents and their friends to her stints in hardcore metal, hip-hop, and Afro-Colombian sexteto groups in her teens, Lido has adopted an all-embracing approach to music in all its moods and hues for most of her life.

Lido, 26, first popped up in Latin-Alternative music fans' radar around 2009 when her tracks began appearing on the influential music blog, Club Fonograma. The musician's vivid blend of electronic music, chanting traditions, and Afro-Colombian rhythms -- which she calls "dark pop"-- on her debut album Color quickly garnered a her following. Mexican singer Julieta Venegas, Colombian alt-vets Aterciopelados, and UK pop act Micachu and the Shapes were some of her new-found fans. Her airy voice makes chameleonic appearances in her music-- going from ethereal to ebullient to sassy-and-sensual to sublime.

Since then, she's become a scene mainstay through a slew of collaborations, including with fellow Colombians Hector Buitrago and Andrea Echeverri (of Aterciopelados), Pernett, and Isa GT. She also makes up one-half of Los Espiritus with Mexico's Antonio Jimenez (aka El Maria y Jose), and Remolido alongside Argentina's El Remolón.

I had the pleasure of catching up with the singer and visual artist in New York recently, where she was taking a break from working on her second album, La Papessa, to shoot a music video with NYC tropical bass DJ/producer Atropolis. She also happened to land a couple gigs during the visit and made her New York debut as well.

Lido was kind enough to let me into her vibrant world -- beginning with her backstory and ending with a good ol' rummage through her backpack. Here's what I found.
Lido heads back to a busy life in Toronto: full-time motherhood, schoolwork in art criticism and curatorial studies, a music curatorship at the Toronto arts space Lula Lounge all the while trying to work on her new album, which she hopes to put out in April 2013.

Life experience -- namely her divorce from Luciano's father and the depression in its wake -- has taken her sophomore release to a darker place than her 2010 effort, she says.

"It's somber… but with hope," Lido explained. "It's tough. It's like those guys who look all hard and tough covered with tattoos and then you look close and the tattoos are of a heart, or a picture of their daughter at her first communion. That's like the vibe."

- http://abcnews.go.com

Lido Pimienta has probably never met a color she didn't like, and probably never will. The same goes for music, which this Colombian artist based in Toronto also visualizes in a chromatic circle.

From performing ABBA at home as a child in her native Barranquilla in front of an audience of her parents and their friends to her stints in hardcore metal, hip-hop, and Afro-Colombian sexteto groups in her teens, Lido has adopted an all-embracing approach to music in all its moods and hues for most of her life.

Lido, 26, first popped up in Latin-Alternative music fans' radar around 2009 when her tracks began appearing on the influential music blog, Club Fonograma. The musician's vivid blend of electronic music, chanting traditions, and Afro-Colombian rhythms -- which she calls "dark pop"-- on her debut album Color quickly garnered a her following. Mexican singer Julieta Venegas, Colombian alt-vets Aterciopelados, and UK pop act Micachu and the Shapes were some of her new-found fans. Her airy voice makes chameleonic appearances in her music-- going from ethereal to ebullient to sassy-and-sensual to sublime.

Since then, she's become a scene mainstay through a slew of collaborations, including with fellow Colombians Hector Buitrago and Andrea Echeverri (of Aterciopelados), Pernett, and Isa GT. She also makes up one-half of Los Espiritus with Mexico's Antonio Jimenez (aka El Maria y Jose), and Remolido alongside Argentina's El Remolón.

I had the pleasure of catching up with the singer and visual artist in New York recently, where she was taking a break from working on her second album, La Papessa, to shoot a music video with NYC tropical bass DJ/producer Atropolis. She also happened to land a couple gigs during the visit and made her New York debut as well.

Lido was kind enough to let me into her vibrant world -- beginning with her backstory and ending with a good ol' rummage through her backpack. Here's what I found.
Lido heads back to a busy life in Toronto: full-time motherhood, schoolwork in art criticism and curatorial studies, a music curatorship at the Toronto arts space Lula Lounge all the while trying to work on her new album, which she hopes to put out in April 2013.

Life experience -- namely her divorce from Luciano's father and the depression in its wake -- has taken her sophomore release to a darker place than her 2010 effort, she says.

"It's somber… but with hope," Lido explained. "It's tough. It's like those guys who look all hard and tough covered with tattoos and then you look close and the tattoos are of a heart, or a picture of their daughter at her first communion. That's like the vibe."

- http://abcnews.go.com