Montañera is the recording project of London-based Colombian artist María Mónica Gutiérrez (who also plays in the bands Suricato and Ságan). In stark contrast to the majority of popular music from Latin America, Gutiérrez makes songs with no beats, instead focusing on synths and ambient sounds. In November, Montañera will release her third solo album, A Flor De Piel, via Western Vinyl. The record was produced by Bogotá electronic duo Rizomagic and mixed by Joseph Shabason, and the result is a collection of quasi-dreamscapes which push at the borders of reality, drawing the listener into surreal new worlds.
Beaming real life suffering through a more allegorical lens, lead single ‘Un Día Voy a Ser Mariposa’ (in English, ‘One Day I Will Be a Butterfly’) is the perfect introduction to the Montañera sound. A track of layered details and searching emotion which seems to be always reaching for some higher plane. This brightness ebbs and flows as though according to some internal weather, though ultimately finds a transcendent state. “It’s a song that talks about the changes within me after a separation,” Gutiérrez explains. “How painful, but also how transformative—becoming a butterfly, how new branches grew in me and sprouted flowers that I give to you. How painful it can be to be born, nonetheless, there is a light that guides me, that awaits me, that burns me, and blinds me. It’s a song about being reborn.”
A Flor De Piel is out on the 17th November and you can pre-order it now from the Montañera Bandcamp page.
Cover photo by Nicolás Cañon