Elysia Crampton - Elysia Crampton (12")

Label: Break World Records – BWR-013
Format: 12"
Country: US
Released: Apr 26, 2018
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental

Elysia Crampton’s eponymous opus - their 4th official album - is a peerless study in sonic ontology, exerting a psychedelic spin on notions of roots & future in a studiously conscious and intricately woven yet immediate manner that’s core to Elysia’s oeuvre.

“Dedicated to Ofelia aka Carlos Espinosa, china* travesti revolutionary (*femme in Aymara). Elysia Crampton’s self-titled album marks her 4th official release. 

The Amerindian musician draws on various Andean styles such as kullawada, huayño, tarqueada, quirqui / tundique, khantus, & morenada, together with genres like metal, psychedelic, & jazz fusion, to tell a story of her movement in the world— performing her history, both sonically & corporeally, as a means to gain economic access & agency. 

With this album, Crampton further situates her work within a long Aymaran musical legacy* that implicates cultures & sites beyond the Andes (following trajectories of dispersion through the literal migration & interaction of bodies & in the circulation of Aymaran concepts, images, music & goods via the world market after the conquest). 

Building upon the ancient notion that Aymara culture is something sustained through movement & contact with others (recall the 'S' meander sign in Andean art) rather than soley being defined in stasis, segregation & linear time, Crampton's work retains the sensation of a belonging in spite of its so-called promiscuity, continually carrying a sense of origin amidst constant motion, which from a Aymara relation to space-time (nayrapacha or 'past' related to the ocular & resides in front) is an origin that also lies ahead, not only behind.