Estel Luz is an Italo-Colombian artist whose most recent album, cycles, is a hypnotic, twisting journey through the prismatic gleam. Her work exists in its own world, a place where vivid colors clash with dusty landscapes and mix together in enticing, inviting ways. Deep rift grooves blanket the horizon on “Ensima” while guitar tendrils wrap around our bodies, collectively tightening and holding our spirits close.
Working with Italo-Cuban Isabel Rodriguez Ramos, “Ensima” sparks to life in the golden hour. Luz dances, her moves bringing shadows to life and beckoning an ancient wave that saturates her every word. The visuals are grounding, keeping the song from jettisoning off into the cosmos, and with that connection, outer and inner worlds become one. It’s mesmerizing and beautiful.
cycles is out now on cassette and digital via never content. I asked Luz and Ramos a few questions about the video and more this week below.
What are you most looking forward to and what makes you hopeful for the year ahead?
I’m most looking forward to being able to produce my music on my own as I don’t really produce via software, but via sampling and pre-recording, and I am most looking forward to playing and singing live. I think people need to vibrate on a different vibe, and it’s time to shake it off and restart. I want to be part of the vibrational healing.
I’m half-Colombian. My people are used to turning tragedies and poverty into rhythms;
Afro-Latin culture has so much to teach to our western mindset. Gratitude should be taught in schools as a separate subject.
What makes you hopeful?
God makes me hopeful, great music and poetry make me hopeful,
lightworkers make me hopeful. The few people who are aligning helping the collective to vibe higher disconnecting from constant fear make me hopeful, not being the same person I was yesterday makes me hopeful. Discovering my true potential and coming out of my self-indulgent shell makes me hopeful and happy.
Let’s talk about the video… How did you all first meet and come to work together on “Ensima”?
I fell in love with Isabel’s art watching her posts on IG; I have an addiction to raw beauty and truth, natural light and Mother Nature, all that is godly beautiful; the best times I cried I was moved to tears by Art or by Nature. We met by chance, which is never a coincidence, and we had some mutual friends – she lived in Amsterdam before the pandemic and I was living in London – we crossed paths in Turin at the right time. We had a coffee together one morning, a moment I will never forget; one of our conversations is part of the Cycles interludes.
I had no idea how the video would be, I just felt Isabel could embody the perfect feminine transition I wanted to convey with this song: confidence and strength, feminine and profound, sweet and deep, grounding yet ethereal; something that could mirror how I was feeling. Everything is evolving constantly and this was the perfect way to capture that moment.
Isabel and I have different ages, yet strong, somehow similar personalities, and we are both mixes of different Afro Latin cultures we clicked on, too, I reckon. She taught me a lot. We learned in one day to go with the flow and let it all happen.
The main concept is around movement, light, and shadow, cold colors and warm colors, the rhythm of the camera follows the human body, hands and feet are the great communicators between the human experience and the outer world leading the eye to lose any sense of time and just melt as the frames go by.
The album is called Cycles and Isabel’s video taps perfectly into the main sense of the great lesson of a complete cycle in the eternal beauty of Life.
Are there any future collaborations in the works or being discussed?
We don’t have future collaborations planned for now.
“We have both worked a lot during these years and we both feel it’s harvest time.” – this is Isabel’s main answer and it’s perfectly full of self-awareness I love it; I personally feel music and godly love will take me to places I’ve dreamed for such a long time with my eyes closed;
they are wide open now, wide open.
What is inspiring you all right now?
Isabel feels her true inspiration is coming back to Mother Earth, as raw material and the primordial core of our true Self; she lets herself be guided by lights and colors coming from wild landscapes, human encounters with other individuals that come to our life to fill us up while being part of the artistic experience; she is very active in her work, she’s very consistent and I admire her very much for this.
Isabel knows that by constantly amazing our eyes through the beauty of Nature we can really observe, listen, create and progress on a daily.
My true inspiration is different. I couldn’t spend much time in Nature during the last few months which was surreal and quite hard to accept. I’ve been really busy so I tried to make the place where I live my source of inspiration; candles, great soundscapes, flowers, dancing, spiritual inspirations, and tactile grounding inspirations as well; and choosing well the people I want to be with as the circle starts to get smaller for the first time in my life I am not angry at anyone, there is no one to blame for anything, there is no enemy; healing is actually the best inspiration and I am grateful to be ready for harvest time as Isabel said.
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