ALE HOP

Ale Hop consciously interrogates an unsettled notion of self in Bodiless. The release’s title is especially befitting for music that detaches itself from any stable sense of presence while at the same time totally suffusing itself with identity. These songs do not seem to want to fix themselves into tidy completion, instead, they explore extraterrestrial forms—at once familiar because of our narrativizing efforts, but still a bit fantastical and speculative and conspiratory. Full of an inherent unknowing, which she embraces.

At the other end of the spectrum, Ale Hop’s Bodiless showcases an omnivorous pop experimentalism, combining elements of noise and washed out electronica with bursts of dancable, post-punky synth pop.

“it is a full opera in five-minutes, a clamoring, disorienting and entrancing scientific study that challenges noise music’s usual penchant for improvisation. It is meticulous and dizzying, a medicinal tune that will surely take multiple listens to fully grasp.”

“Coming from the interesting underground scene of Lima, Alejandra Cárdenas spent years playing in pop and post-punk fields until, in 2015, she moved to Berlin, her current headquarters of operations. There she has rooted her most personal, ambitious and mutant project of hers, the one that hides under the mask of Ale Hop.”

“Ale Hop’s production is noisy and brave, but also finely textured and detailed enough to make active listening feel imaginatively vivid and participatory. (…) The Life Of Insects is the most original sounding album I’ve heard of late, and the most controlled and musical application of noise I’ve experienced in a long time”

Raro Mixtape 13:
ALE HOP (FEMALE PIONEERS OF ELECTRONIC AND ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC IN LATIN AMERICA)

“I wanted to contribute to the conversation around women pioneers of electronic and electroacoustic music in this mix, showing the Latin American composers’ elegance and complexity around the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These works are in dialogue with the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, but they are not simply reverberations from the Anglo-European traditions; they condensed a unique and particular spirit.”

As Ale Hop, Peruvian-born Alejandra Cardenas composes electronic and electroacoustic music that adds influences from noise, pop, avant-garde and ambient to an unorthodox repertoire of techniques for electric guitar and live sampling devices. Always pushing the boundaries of artistic and sonic exploration, Ale Hop creates a sonic vocabulary of astonishing intensity. Distortions combine to create a complex layer of atmospherics. In addition to her solo projects, Alejandra Cardenas has composed scores for film, dance and theatre projects, and she has done research on art, sound, decolonial thinking and technology. She is also the editor of the academic publication Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal and co-organiser of the festival Radical Sounds Latin America.

“The Peruvian artist and musician compiles some of the music that has inspired an upcoming live performance with cajón player Laura Robles.”

„Mutierte peruanische Rhythmen“

Laura Robles und Ale Hop treten gemeinsam beim „Heroines of Sound Festival“ auf. Noch immer fehle es an Vorbildern für angehende Musikerinnen.

Ale Hop: Ich fühle mich nicht wie eine Heldin, aber manchmal ist diese Art von Bestätigung notwendig, um ein Ungleichgewicht zu korrigieren. Die Behauptung war dringend, als das Festival 2014 zum ersten Mal stattfand. Als es ein völliges Ungleichgewicht bei Festivals gab, was die weibliche Beteiligung angeht. Bei elektronischen Musikfestivals waren oft nur etwa 10 Prozent der Künst­le­r:in­nen weiblich.

Laura Robles: Nicht nur bei elektronischer Musik. Bei praktisch allem, außer beim Ballett … Deswegen sind wir im Moment schon ein sehr wichtiges Vorbild für die neuen Generationen. Wir selbst hatten als Vorbilder eigentlich nur Männer. Für mich als angehende Schlagzeugerin waren alle berühmten Schlagzeuger Männer, außer ein paar Frauen in unglaublich sexy Kleidern. Auch damit konnte ich mich nicht identifizieren.

Ale Hop & Laura Robles – Agua Dulce “Global Album of the Month”

…For Peruvian artist Ale Hop and percussionist Laura Robles, the cajón’s subversive past has been obscured by its contemporary ubiquity. On their debut album, Agua Dulce, they present nine tracks of electronically processed and deconstructed cajón rhythms, aiming to reconnect a percussive sound with its rebellious roots. …

The first 15 minutes of Lima-born, Berlin-based instrumentalist Ale Hop’s MUTEK performance sounded like a jet engine taking off, intermittently paused as the experimental artist otherwise known as Alejandra Cárdenas muted the guitar – which she really used like a drum – and modular noise patches. She also powerfully strummed the highest notes on the guitar with ear-piercing trills, to almost jarring effect. It was different from the album experience she creates on works like Agua dulce (a Laura Robles collaboration) or last year’s Why Is It They Say A City Like Any City? and one of the loudest shows in recent memory, up there in decibels with someone like A Place To Bury Strangers or Sunn O))). For those of us wrapped up in the show for the full running time – there were some amongst the throng who couldn’t withstand the intensity for the duration – there was nothing else quite like it.

Die Begleitung von Chaos: AGUA DULCE beim CTM Festival

Verästelt und gespenstisch

Mit E-Gitarre und Cajón durchstreifen Ale Hop und Laura Robles folkloristische Rhythmen von den Küsten Perus und übersetzen sie in Klangexperimente.

Alejandra Cárdenas alias Ale Hop und Laura Robles stammen aus Lima. Kennengelernt haben sich die beiden Musikerinnen allerdings erst in Berlin – wo sie dann auch eine andere Beziehung zu folkloristischen Traditionen ihrer Heimat fanden, um diese munter zu dekonstruieren.

Zu hören ist das auf dem elektroakustisch-experimentellen Album „Aqua Dulce“, benannt nach einem Strand in ihrer Heimatstadt. Denn Ausgangspunkt ihrer spröden, oft düster grundierten Tracks sind Rhythmen der peruanischen Küstenregionen. Immer wieder wird Tanzbares angedeutet und umgehend in seine Bestandteile zerbröselt. Oder ganz zerhackt.

The new mixtape instalment comes from Ale Hop (aka Alejandra Cárdenas) and Laura Robles. Alejandra Cárdenas is a Berlin-based artist, researcher, and experimental instrumentalist originally from Lima, Perú.

Earlier this year, together with Laura Robles (a percussionist and bassist formed from a very young age in the rich Afro-Peruvian and Cuban musical traditions and who also grew up in Lima), they released one of the most exciting albums of the year, Agua Dulce (Buh Records, 2023). This mix takes on and reflects on both artists’ inspiration and musical journey for Agua Dulce.

Musician and researcher Alejandra Cardenas aka Ale Hop selects and annotates music by some of the Latin American women composers of electronic music profiled in her new book “Switched On: The Dawn Of Electronic Sound By Latin American Women“

Experimental instrumentalist Ale Hop and percussionist-bassist Laura Robles joined forces for one of the most exciting albums of the year, ‘Agua dulce’. In this double interview, the two Berlin-based musicians talk about their Peruvian birthplace, way of working, and influences. In anticipation of their show on 4 October, you can already get to know the dynamic duo better.