Ela Minus Album Reviews

Gabriela Jimeno Caldas was born in 1990 in Bogotá, Colombia. She spent her teens as the drummer for Colombian hardcore band Ratón Pérez. They played at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. She moved to the US, where she studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She majored in jazz drumming and music synthesis. After graduating, she worked in New York, building and testing synths.

I think we have enough dance music about dancing. I don’t need to give us more of that.

Ela Minus, NME

Ela Minus’s techno-pop is often retro-tinged. She makes music that she can recreate live on stage, working with analogue synthesizers. She’s influenced by Radiohead and 1970s electronic legends Kraftwerk. Like Kraftwerk, her stilted delivery is part of her appeal – it also recalls Brian Eno’s vocal records from the 1970s.

Ela Minus Album Reviews

Acts of Rebellion

2020, 9/10
Ela Minus planned Acts of Rebellion as a double album. But she instead honed a wide selection of tracks into a tight 34-minute record. She scrawled “bright music for dark times” on her keyboard when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. The liner notes of her debut album elaborate – they state that it “is a collection about the personal as political and embracing the beauty of tiny acts of revolution in our everyday lives.”

Peaceful instrumentals like ‘Pocket Piano’ give Acts of Rebellion balance, but the vocal tracks are the most distinctive. Minus’ vocals are mixed low on ‘Megapunk’, subsumed into the track’s electronic urgency. Helado Negro duets with Minus on the pretty ‘Close’.

The pulsating portrait of disconnection on ‘Dominique’ is most memorable. “Today I woke up at 7….pm” is the opening line to ‘Dominique’. Improbably, her vocals are simultaneously assertive, pretty, and robotic.

Acts of Rebellion is an accomplished debut record, with Minus melding memorable songwriting with her electronic mastery.

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DÍA

2025, 9/10
Ela Minus created DÍA during a period of upheaval. She left the New York apartment where she’d lived for seven years because she couldn’t afford the rent. So she recorded DÍA in different studios and locations throughout the world. Minus created ‘Abrir Monte’ on a mountain in Mexico, started ‘Combat’ in Colombia, while she recorded ‘Onwards’ in the Californian desert in beween Coachella weekends.

Since she recorded in different locations, Minus couldn’t use her normal synth setup. She used her laptop, something she avoided on Acts of Rebellion. She also used more distortion than previously.

Día is Spanish for day. Minus told 15Questions that “this album felt like walking into a room, and walking into myself and turning a light on, then observing.”

Día is just as strong as Minus’s acclaimed debut. There’s a great opening one-two punch. The brooding ‘Abrir Monte’ leads into the abrasive ‘Broken’, where the building tension is suddenly released. Her vocals are more prominent, like on the combative ‘Idols’. And Día is often gorgeous, like on the closing ‘Combat’.

Ela Minus has released two great albums in a row.

Best Ela Minus Songs

Broken
Dominique
Combat
Megapunk
Abrir Monte
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