Sobresaltos by Ana Ruiz

Between 1993 and 2003, Mexican composer and pianist Ana Ruiz created several musical pieces in unique contexts of commissioned works with synthesizers through collaborations with different artists and institutions. Campo Abierto selected these pieces as an archaeological catalog to diversify and contextualize other aspects of Ana Ruiz's career as a free composer.

Due to her professional praxis, Ruiz produced several pieces (mostly unreleased) from discoveries and thematic sketches. A script, a visual motif, a topic, a rubric, or a life experience were starting points to craft spontaneous, malleable, diverse, inventive, and playful sounds made with the music technology available at hand at the time. Some pieces come with emotional ties such as a dear friend moving out to a distant location, or recovery wishes for her sick brother, or were commissioned by fellow artists, documentary filmmakers, dance companies, and media outlets from institutions.

Other pieces were commissioned by government entities for public education in Mexico, whose objective was to encourage learning in rural areas and create Latin American and Ibero-American educational networks through open-channel television. But beyond the pedagogical agenda, mass media, or that particular time in Mexico, this album calls us to review our aesthetic, generational, and cultural references, and recognize that each track exceeds its original context and works in the present.

Revising these sounds, melodies, and rhythms becomes a powerful, singular, and unintended comment that anticipates revisionist and hyperbolic genres such as vaporwave, chillwave, or hypnagogic pop. To pay attention to what this release offers, we must go beyond our musical referentiality to achieve flexible listening and regard time and aesthetics as infinite and elastic.

The limited edition art was handmade by Nicolás Villalobos Guerrero* who, in his words, represented rain that makes people run, a penguin that was carried away by a whirlpool, Mexico with fireworks, a spider in a swallow's nest, a nest for seagulls to be more active, a pokemon battle, a colorful watermelon, a devil from Oaxaca, a lady selling stuffed animals, a person who stood up, a robot that caused a problem and the sea surrounded by grass among other scenes.

*Nicolas is a 5-year-old artist who is interested in fossils, stones, insects, robots, singing, electric guitar, and percussion.

Campo Abierto is a label dedicated to publishing material by artists seeking an authentic language in the fields of sound and visual arts. We specialize in releasing handcrafted physical editions in limited runs.

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