The band name, Diles Que No Me Maten, literally means ‘Tell them not to kill me.’ That phrase alone should catch your attention even before a single note is heard. Tap play on Escrito En Agua, the Mexico City group’s latest release issued this month, and you might be drawn in further by the mournful New Orleans–tinged jazz dirge that opens the record. When that track, ‘Las noches que dormimos en sillas,’ nudges you toward ‘Hiriku,’ you may find yourself drifting through space and time toward a Can concert in Cologne from 1971. Any remaining fog will vanish as you realize you’re listening to a band wholly unlike any other.
Escrito En Agua marks the group’s fourth LP, so newcomers have plenty of material to catch up on. Yet this record alone reveals a broad landscape of sound to explore. It calls to mind the recent Winged Wheel release in how it hops across genres, leaping between the abstract and the immediate, gnawing and swirling with a tangible physicality, while never quite feeling terrestrial. From the woodwind interlude ‘La rata modesta’ to the haunting guitar piece ‘Kilómetros dentro de un túnel,’ they summon an atmosphere without words or percussion. And when the ensemble locks together and unfurls the eight-minute psychedelic closer ‘Tunuwame,’ they remain spellbinding in full-band mode.
Listen to the phrases etched in water displayed below.
Escrito En Agua has just dropped via Moonlight Activities. You can purchase it here.
