Jazz
International Anthem · 16 October 2026
“Escondida” begins with a cymbal crash and a hand-drum polyrhythm settles in at once and does not move for five minutes and thirty-six seconds: a slow bass line and a descending bell melody come down over it, and Ben Boye’s autoharp enters from one side. It is an opening that does not invite you in, which is exactly what it means to be: the record warns that it will work through repetition and texture rather than melody.
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti supplies voice, synthesizers, percussion and organ, and Frank Rosaly drums, percussion and more synthesizers. Boye appears on the first four tracks with synthesizers, pianet and autoharp, and Chris Williams adds trumpet and electronics on the third and fourth. It was recorded at the MOLK Factory in Amsterdam during the summer of 2026, with additional recording in Puerto Rico, Los Angeles and New York; Dave Vettraino mixed it. The “O” of the title is the Taíno word for mountain, and the material comes out of bomba, plena, rumba, batá and cumbia, the same ground the duo worked on “MESTIZX”, released on 3 May 2024.
The track titled with a set of coordinates — those of the Río Blanco in Puerto Rico, just below the El Yunque forest — runs five minutes and twenty-two seconds and starts as a drone: the synthesizers waver without going anywhere until Rosaly’s drums and a horn give it solid ground. It is the most abstract track and also the one that best explains the method here, which is to let a texture settle and then find the pulse inside it.
The centre is “X” (6:23), with Ferragutti singing in Spanish over a drum pattern that moves a great deal and is the most danceable thing on the album, and the title piece, eight minutes and thirty-five seconds rising towards a Latin jazz climax while the voice recites a poem about that Taíno word. “Liberta” (6:40) opens with crickets and frogs in the background and returns to the spoken word.
The ending is the weak point. “Sueño” lasts two minutes and thirty-nine seconds and resolves by fading a field recording of Caribbean music up into the foreground: after five tracks of carefully constructed sound, the record ends by handing the last word to a document it did not make. It is a gesture of respect and also an abdication, and it leaves the whole without the conclusion the other five pieces had been preparing.
Rating: 8.0/10
Text by Aina Torrents