Lido Pimienta - La Belleza
Pitchfork: Album Review (8.0)
“The great promise of ‘Miss Colombia’, and of her new leadership in a predominantly white scene, is that brown girls will hear it and be inspired to surge to the front.” – Pitchfork
“A substantial cultural statement uniting Afro-Colombian roots with just enough synthesizer heft to place Pimienta’s music in the here and now” – New York Times
“Pimienta’s soaring vocal melodies resound like sunlight breaking through the clouds” – Rolling Stone, Song You Need to Know
“Pimienta’s effort is a taxonomy of love and oppression disguised as love, and it demands a more just world” – NPR Latino
“A coronation … In her singular fashion, Pimienta has drawn back the curtain on a vast world to be explored” – Stereogum
“Pimienta defies the norm of relations and individualism” – Billboard
“Strikingly colorful … powerful vocals” – Fader
In 2021, Pimienta and choreographer Andrea Miller became the first all-female team to compose and choreograph a piece of music for the New York City Ballet, Pimienta also being the first woman of color to do so. This collaboration helped inspire ‘La Belleza’.
Working with Ableton and her MIDI controller and alongside producer Owen Pallett—a fellow Polaris Prize winner and composer and arranger for Sampha, Lana Del Rey, and the Her soundtrack—Pimienta felt herself repeatedly drawn to the Luboš Fišer soundtrack for the film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and music from the second century; two direct influences were the solemn liturgical hymn Lux Aeterna, a Gregorian chant that is performed at Requiems (the mass of the dead) and sixteenth century singing of the Castrati, i.e. choirs of young boys that were castrated so that they would permanently keep their high-pitched singing voices.
“If no matter what style or genre of music I make, the result will always be relegated to the World Music aisle—in stores, in the algorithm—then why not create something no one would ever expect from a Caribbean woman?” Pimienta asked. “Why not make an album that completely defies those categories? What if I made an entirely orchestral record?”
‘La Belleza’ encapsulates why Lido Pimienta is the artist of our moment. Unafraid to explore the depths of her creativity, she produced a haunting, invigorating album that only prompts the question: What will come next?