cloud collecting #46: ross
Colombia-based artist ross on weaving a deep emotional and spiritual connection with music
One of my favorite things about this community is getting submissions and being introduced to artists I’ve never heard before. With Colombia-based artist ross, this even includes a whole ambient/experimental scene I hadn’t previously been aware of. It makes the world feel smaller and filled with glimmers of hope to know these little creative pockets exist everywhere. I’m left inspired by ross’ words and the sounds within her new EP, canciones del fin (via Tesorito) released just yesterday. Keep up with her here.
ross is a sound producer and DJ from Medellín, Colombia and is head of the ambient/experimental label, Éter. Her sound practice drifts between soundscape, ambient, downtempo and experimental electronics, guided by ecological and existential questions. Her first work, Yubartas, was a 33-minute journey with humpback whales in the Colombian-Pacific coast, released in 2020 via Éter. The three pieces were composed with subaquatic field recordings captured by Madre Agua Eco and molded by ross through superposition amd extended layers of songs, guttural emissions, gurgling, rinsing and rumbling, appealing to sound as a possibility to heal our interspecies relationship.
1. As someone deeply involved in Colombia’s experimental scene, how does your geography, community and place in this world play a part into this new collection of songs?
I think that being born in Colombia carries a collective wound that runs deeply through my music and the music of many in this community. I like to think that we are all trying to heal a generational grief through an sonic trance. At the same time, growing up in these territories of abundance, biodiversity and entropy has made me sensitive to the beauty of the more-than-human world. That’s why sweetness and pain meet and melt together in the soundscapes and melodies of these songs.
The land I’ve lived in over the past few years also plays an important role in my music and in this record. Most of the songs were slowly woven in Santa Elena, one of the mountains on Medellín’s eastern hillside, where I’m fortunate to live. It’s a place with such intriguing acoustic dynamics, where I’m surrounded by different bird species –green jay, motmot, toucanets, chachalacas, hawks– along with the buzzing of insects, lawn-cutting machines, human voices, neighbors’ dogs barking and the hum of airplanes in the background. The fog forest’s cacophony along with the human presence becomes a beautiful quantum entanglement that inevitably seeps into my sonic exploration.
2. What brought you to writing ambient/experimental music? Would you say this is something that interested you from a young age or is it a recent love of yours?
Ambient wasn’t something that had always been with me –I didn’t even know it existed when I was a child. Growing up, I was surrounded by vallenato and tropical music, and in my teenage years I was listening to alternative rock and indie. My first encounter with experimental music came many years later, around 2013 when I began going to some weird listening sessions that took place in an old house downtown Medellín. They were put together by a small group of sound art and experimental music enthusiasts and nerds, who over time became friends and the bridge that brought me closer to these sonic practices.
Since then, I’ve been weaving a deep emotional and spiritual connection with that introspective side of music, with the sounds that help me root myself and connect to the here and now, to the present I sometimes try to escape. Also it’s a bond that has slowly changed over time: it began as a listener, slowly shifted into a curating role within the label (éter), and little by little made its way into my own practice, becoming my most intimate and cathartic expression.
3. How do you cloud collect (connect to childlike wonder) in your creativity?
I like to make “small things” –or “things for small ones”– every now and then: coloring books, drawing zen doodles, spirals, repeating patterns. Maybe I’ve held onto a childhood fixation I had with repetition, and now it also shows up in sound loops and zoning out music.
Thank you for the recommendation to this beautiful music. Though I have not been to Medellín, I've been to Bógota twice in recent years and can vouch for its thriving music scene. I am really quite taken by canciones del fin and look forward to hearing more of Ross' music.