019
Hola,
I hope these words find you well. I have just landed in Barcelona after some incredible, and incredibly inspiring shows in Brazil and Argentina, but that deserves its own letter, so more on that in the next one. I finally found the time to finish writing to you about a couple of things that happened this week.
QQQQ has multiplied. Last Tuesday I released an EP that extends this song to new territories. The dear Nick León made two remixes of it and I made a live edit and a club edit.
Nick and I have friends in common. We met one day that we both happened to be in Mexico City, had a coffee and have been making a lot of music together since. I featured on his debut album which came out in June. These two remixes were a natural continuation to that, and there is more to come. These remixes feel more like a collaboration than remixes. We exchanged a lot of voice notes back and forth about the arrangement, the spirit behind the original song and how to accentuate that, about how we felt about dance music and where we want to take it, and these remixes were our playground to experiment on that and many more ideas and thoughts. More on that, soon.
The club edit I made at the same time I made the original song, years ago by now if I'm honest. If you’ve seen me do a dj set you have probably heard this since I've been playing it out for a while. I like that it takes its time. I like that it expands the sentiment of the song for almost 3 times what the original takes. I enjoy that, and I hope you do to.
And finally, the live edit. I am so happy that I was able to include this version on this EP. It feels important and so very meaningful to have it out right now. I’ve been playing QQQQ live for about a year now. But I wrote it around 2022. Back then, after more than year of being away from stages I returned with a new found optimism of the promise of how things could have changed for the better after humanity went through a period of, well, deep change. I was optimistic about the future, I saw glimpses of hope through my phone and my computer, of hope of a better present and future for all of us, but then crashed against a wall when I went back out to stages -especially festival stages- and was confronted face to face with -what felt to me- to be the total opposite. More hedonism, more drugs, more alcohol, more out of control crowds just wanting to be entertained, shouting for more, hungry to forget, hungry to end the confusion. I felt sad, confused, out of place and depleted after almost every show, and then one show while looking out at the empty gazes of a festival crowd I wrote QQQQ. If it’s going to be like this, let the world end now. If what I see is it, let it end, now.
Si va a ser así
Que se acabe el mundo.
Si lo que veo es el fin,
Que se acabe el mundo.
It came from a deep feeling of frustration and desperation and anger. Turned it into a ‘euphoric’ dance song to drive the point home. Made it a part of DIA, started playing it live with the album version, started seeing new people sing it along with me, started seeing present gazes meeting my eyes. I saw myself in you, I saw you feel the same as I do. We met in the song, we danced in the sadness and impotence of living powerlessly in a world that feels increasingly like it doesn't belong to us. And so, something clicked, and I started making this new version of the old version, a new version which I can’t sing without shouting and crying. Reminding us that we are still here, we might feel powerless, we might be powerless, but we are still here, and this desperation - we have to turn it into something else, we simply have to. Into anger, into action, into speaking out, into faith, into something else. We can’t just sit on it, we can’t just dance on it, we need to transform it, and transform ourselves. Because it isn't really over, till it's over. We are still here.
No tiene porqué ser así.
Todavía estamos
Estamos aquí.
La desilusión que compartimos
Tenemos que volverla algo más.
I hope you cry and shout and get angry and find a new faith and hope with this live edit.
I also announced new live shows. I'm coming back to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Bogotá, going (for the first time) to headline shows in San Francisco, Medellín y Cali, and going (also for the first time) to Caracas. Europe, I will see you again next year.
All U.S shows go on sale today. Colombia and Venezuela stay tuned, all details will come soon for you. I am very excited to close this year where I started it, in Bogotá. And to bring DIA in its full force live show to cities that I haven't been to in a while like Medellín and Cali, and for the first time in Venezuela.
Sending you all my love,
Ela.