\n
\u201cEvery time I\u2019m in L.A. for a longer period of time, I feel like I retire into myself more. Staying downtown too, felt very aggressive, yet familiar to me,\u201d says Minus, of how L.A. influenced her latest record.<\/p>\n
(Alvaro Ariso)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n
Minus was born as Gabriela Jimeno Caldas, in Bogot\u00e1, Colombia. She got her start in music as a drummer in a local punk band called Rat\u00f3n P\u00e9rez, which she joined at the age of 12. Her percussion skills led to her leaving Colombia to attend the Berklee College of Music, where she double majored in jazz drumming and music synthesis. At school, she was introduced to hardware and software synths, and continued to explore her drumming abilities by experimenting with electronica. <\/p>\n
After working as a touring drummer and helping design synth software, Minus\u2019 solo career started to take off with the release of her 2020 debut album, \u201cacts of rebellion.\u201d She created the entire project by herself, from the depths of her at-home studio in Brooklyn. Composed of icy club beats and steadfast synthetics, she describes the album as \u201csonically concise,\u201d in that she intentionally used limited instrumentation.<\/p>\n
When approaching her 2025 follow-up record, she says that she yearned to pick up new instruments, switch up the process and hopefully end up with an entirely different result.<\/p>\n
In a sudden turn of events, her rent in New York quadrupled because of COVID-19 inflation rates, and she had to leave the city. She says her life quickly became a \u201cmess.\u201d But her next steps were clear as ever \u2014 instead of settling into a new apartment, she took on a nomadic lifestyle, with making new music as her only goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to start and finish a record in the moment, while all of this is happening, and when I\u2019m feeling this way,\u201d says Minus, who says she was feeling a self-imposed artistic pressure. \u201cI figured I could postpone my personal life out of wanting to make this record.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the course of six months, she hopped from city to city, living out of her suitcase and renting recording studios. She ended up in places like London, Mexico City and Seattle. The repetitious process of packing up and settling into new places allowed her to easily decipher which tracks she wanted to keep pushing and which ones she would leave behind.<\/p>\n
Along her journey, she lived in downtown Los Angeles for a short period of time. She says she finds the city to be a bit \u201calienating\u201d with a \u201cuniquely heavy\u201d energy. To her luck, the city\u2019s ethos aligned with the sonic soundscape she was building out in \u201cD\u00eda.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I\u2019m in L.A. for a longer period of time, I feel like I retire into myself more. Staying downtown too, felt very aggressive, yet familiar to me,\u201d says Minus, who noted the lack of people walking, the amount of traffic in the streets and the boundless nature of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
The album began at a low point in Minus\u2019 life, where she seems to be going through an identity crisis. Over spacey sirens and an accumulating bass line, on \u201cBroken,\u201d she admits to being \u201ca fool \/ acting all cool\u201d and being on her knees, without a sense of faith. Throughout the first several tracks, she confronts her inner monologue through candid lyrics, offering herself a reality check.<\/p>\n
\u201cProducing beats with really low bass lines feels comfortable to me. It makes me want to open up naturally to get to the point of writing lyrics and singing. When the production is more sparse, like with a guitar, it\u2019s harder to write more vulnerably. It feels kinda cheesy,\u201d says Minus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn myself, there\u2019s this constant cohabitation of dark and light and aggressive and sweet sounds,\u201d she continues. So when vulnerable feelings come out, the really hardcore, distorted sounds follow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Songs like \u201cIdk\u201d and \u201cAbrir Monte\u201d simulate the experience of being submerged as a muffled, yet pounding bass line takes charge. Other times, as in \u201cIdols,\u201d Minus\u2019 dissected blend of club pop and dark ambient sounds lends a grimy, industrial feel to her mechanical melodies. She captures the commonplace (yet cathartic) experience of losing yourself in a sweaty mass of limbs on a dance floor.<\/p>\n
The Latin Grammy-nominated track \u201cQQQQ\u201d marks a turning point in the album. It was a song she wrote in a matter of hours to depict her own mindset change. \u201cI was very aware that [for] the first half of the record, there was a lot of tension. I just needed a moment of release for this [album] to land fully. I needed a moment of uncontrollable sobbing on the dance floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The album ends with her resolving to confront her struggles with self-acceptance, with the frankly written \u201cI Want To Be Better\u201d \u2014 which escalates with the feverish punk pulse of \u201cOnwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
To her, the album is equal parts apocalyptic and hopeful, reflecting both the chaos of the outside world and her newfound inner peace. Since making the record and performing it frequently, she says she\u2019s internalized the lessons she learned along the way. \u201cWhen you\u2019re going through something, sometimes the only thing you can trust is time. Your perspective will change, maybe for better or for worse. <\/p>\n
\u201cTime heals,\u201d adds Minus. \u201cThat\u2019s something I learned for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ela Minus will be headlining at the Echoplex in Echo Park on Oct. 29.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every night before going to bed, Ela Minus shuts off her phone. Oftentimes, the Colombian artist-producer won\u2019t even turn it back on until the following afternoon. One day, in mid-September, when Minus logged on, she received an unexpected flurry of messages from both close friends and people she hadn\u2019t spoken to in years. Each notification […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2111712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2111711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Ela-Minus-talks-new-album-Dia-Latin-Grammy-nomination.com2F8f2F2f2Fb4399c594ec98d499ad16011.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2111711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2111713,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111711\/revisions\/2111713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2111712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2111711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2111711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2111711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}