Myths are unearthed here and rebuilt into something entrancing and immersive, so much so that it feels like a memory. Mexico City composer and producer Nnux (Ana E. Lopez Reyes) creates an excavation site from sonic rituals on her latest album, Metamorfosis. Inner worlds are explored through historical silhouettes, sound working as a mirror. Aqueous synth arpeggios bleed into distorted, grinding beats, pooling underneath rhythmic breathwork that hypnotizes. Brush away the dust and a crystalline sheen shows itself, simultaneously fragile and precise. Through everything, Reyes’s voice cuts a clean line, the one constant in this soundworld formed from the bones of shape-shifting, buried gods. It’s an incredible record.
Metamorfosis is OUT NOW on cmntx. Nnux’s website can be found HERE.
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Where does your relationship with sound begin? Are there early memories, specific recordings, moments that first pulled you in?
I started playing piano from a young age. My paternal grandfather was a traditional accordion musician; my maternal grandfather wrote songs and had a keyboard I always played with as a child; my uncle is a bassist; my parents are music lovers, so I think I was exposed to lots of different music when I was growing up. My uncle moved to Singapore when I was 7 and left a piano at my parents’ house. I approached the instrument and asked my parents for lessons, and I haven’t stopped making music since.
How did you arrive at the kind of work you make now? Between your voice as an instrument, experimental electronics, conceptual composition approaches, etc., it’s not an obvious destination. What was your path like?
It’s been a really long path. I’ve been involved in many different musical and artistic worlds. I think I’m a very curious person in general. I’ve always been inspired by artists who can inhabit many different artistic and musical worlds. My first really strong love for music came when I was a teenager and was obsessed with prog rock, where conceptual albums are a very important element. I remember being 14-15 and being completely blown away by that, which makes sense because I grew up reading a lot, so having storylines was always interesting for me. Then I became exposed to more and more music and art. I like to listen, watch, experience everything, and find inspiration from many different places, which definitely has felt scattered at times, but I think at the end that’s where creativity is. I’ve studied classical and jazz piano, played synths in bands, written for classical ensembles, sung folk songs, worked with electronic music, and worked in performance, installation, and digital art. In the end, all these things inform each other and allow you to get creative.
Metamorfosis began as an exploration of the feminine in mythologies across different cultures. Where did that investigation start? Were there specific traditions or figures you were drawn to first?
I was interested in learning about representations of femininity in different cultures, trying to understand the idea of the feminine before our current understanding of it. I was trying to explore those social constructions around gender, while exploring what these representations across cultures in the world shared between them. It was very interesting. I read many myths from different traditions, too many to write here, but some examples came from Mesopotamia, the Mexica (Aztec) empire, Japan, Celtic myths, some Greek myths, Mayan, Chibcha, Toba, Hindu, Zulu, Bantu, and many more. It was a very interesting deep dive.
What did the research process look like for this album? How long were you investigating mythologies before the music started taking shape?
I think I spent a few months just reading and listening to music that could be an influence. I was reading about all these myths and made a chart (that I’m looking at right now), where I compiled the myths that I thought were interesting and found common threads between them. Many elements repeat in these myths: a deity that is very powerful but forced into being docile; many of them are able to shape-shift, an ability to control nature, or in some cases being nature; a lot are thought to have come from a star, lots of ties to fertility, the ability to create life. It was interesting finding all these common threads and start shaping my story around them.
The project transformed significantly when you encountered the Arhuaco concept of shape-shifting, the idea that chamans take on the perspectives of non-human beings in order to understand the world differently. What did that teaching open up for you? How did it change the direction of the album?
My intention in reading all these myths was to try to understand the social construct of femininity beyond what has been established from Western thought. I wanted to understand that as a general notion, but also within myself. How much of who I am as a woman is socially constructed? The short answer is, pretty much all of it. But in finding this notion of shape-shifting to understand different perspectives, I found the desire of how I would like to live not only as a woman but as a human, which was very deep for me. Reading all these stories allowed me to think of femininity in its different possible dimensions. Seeing that complexity and navigating that complexity while staying flexible is how I want to exist in this lifetime.
The main character of this record moves through storms, flowers, fire, stars, and animals. How did you decide on those particular forms? Was there a logic to the sequence, or did it emerge more intuitively?
I think some of those were more free choices, but the main idea was that I wanted to have contrasting elements. A violent fire and a fragile flower, for example.
The album’s first chapter, Tormentas, is loosely based on Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess whose monolith was buried by Spanish colonizers. That feels like a very deliberate starting point. What drew you to her specifically, and what does it mean to make her an awakening?
Coatlicue is a key figure in Mexica (Aztec) mythology. She’s the goddess of fertility, mother, representing life and death. I’ve been obsessed with the story of her monolith for many years, and there’s actually more nuance about its burial. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish colonizers ordered the destruction of everything in the city, and it is believed that the mexicas buried it to protect it af first. Then, more than 200 years later, it was rediscovered, unburied, and buried again in fear that the indigenous and mestizo population would start adoring the image again. This burying-unburying happened, I believe, three times; the piece was unburied for study, then buried again for fear of a revolt. I find that fascinating. This is a representation of femininity that is very different from what you see in Western representations. It’s quite aggressive; she has skulls hanging from her skirt, she has two snakes instead of a head, she embodies both creation and destruction. So for me, to start, there was like imagining we’re finally unburying that version, that power and potential. But then, for the rest of the time in the story, my question is: what do we do with that power when we have it?
The story shifts between first, second, and third person across the album. That’s a very conscious structural choice. What does changing perspective do to the listener’s relationship with the character?
For this, I have to credit Arancha, a musician and friend of mine from Veracruz, Mexico. Her album tells the story of her grandfather, but she does it in a way that not only tells you about him, but also about the places he inhabited, the people he influenced during his life, his complexities and contradictions. Sometimes you hear the story from her voice, talking to her grandfather; sometimes you hear it from other people, sometimes she’s talking to him, sometimes she’s talking to the other people who knew him, sometimes to us who didn’t. And I think that chorus of voices gives you a more complete vision of a person; you’re not only getting their perspective, but a fuller, richer idea of them. I wanted to go for that in this record.
The human voice is at the center of the record, and you worked with members of AVAJI, a Georgian polyphony choir based in Mexico City, alongside Paulina Parga and Sarmen Almond. How did those collaborations come together? What did each voice bring that yours alone couldn’t?
Working with others was one of my favorite parts about doing this record. I’m really thankful to all the people who sang with me. From the beginning, my idea was to have lots of voices to signal this shared experience in femininity, this social construct that we are all a part of and we’re all affected by. I wanted to have just female voices, but then that changed as the idea of the album grew more complex. For a long time, I just used my own voice for most of it, sang many layers, and re-pitched my voice to create a choir. But having the actual choir made it so much better. Working with the choir, I was finally able to get the sound that I was looking for. Also, I love all of these people; I love to have their voices there forever, being a part of this.
Fertilidad is described as a celebration of the creation of life and female sexuality. That chapter sits alongside some very turbulent and destructive chapters. How did you think about its placement and tone within the larger arc?
This song is the climax-resolution part of the record. This part is about the celebration of that creative force; sexuality is a part of it, but not all. The previous chapters were about dealing with some difficult parts, the pain in transformation. This chapter is what comes after the process. I found many myths where the body of the goddess is or becomes the world itself (I actually made another project about that). I was thinking of that idea and images. Then we made a video about that with my collaborator LVSTVCRV.
Something that strikes me about the album is how it moves between intimate lived experience and mythological scale. How did you think about holding those two things together?
That was part of my idea from the beginning: seeing the intimate lived experience through this lens of the larger mythological scale. I think it’s interesting to see these myths as cultural representations of a society’s cosmovision, but the thing is that that also involves the private and the intimate. These large, mythological representations also tell us about how societies think about themselves on a micro scale, too. That was a big part of the idea for me. Also, living and exploring the experience through these big ideas and images allowed me to explore the poetic and symbolic languages of it all. I wanted to bring these huge cosmic things into the mundane to see ourselves through that.
What were some things that really surprised you about making this record? What was the biggest challenge to overcome?
Many, many challenges. In the process itself, going deep into myself was quite a journey; it involved a lot of introspection and vulnerability. There are two songs in particular that feel very vulnerable: “Incendios,” which is about our potential for violence and destruction, and “Perdí mis flores,” which is about fragility. I really had to open up and deal with some uncomfortable feelings. Part of the challenge for me was exploring sounds that felt vulnerable with my voice, like screaming or moaning. In “Perdí mis flores,” I was breathing very heavily, trying to emulate my panic attack experience, and I almost gave myself a panic attack in the studio. I also have lots ot takes of myself screaming to the top of my capacity, which is something I don’t let myself do that often, so that felt very vulnerable too.
And more on the material side, making a project like this has been a huge challenge. I’m thankful that I did have support through a grant by the Mexican Government for young artists, and through a residency at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, but even with that, the project was big, and I’ve had to take it slow. Another thing was mixing; this is the first record that I mixed myself, which meant a lot of trial and error, which also slowed down the process quite a bit, but I’m happy I did it! Overall, this has been a big learning experience.
Shape-shifting as a concept implies that identity is not fixed, that the self is multiple and mutable. Is that something you identify with personally, or was it more of a concept that the album sort of grew into?
This identification happened as part of the process of the album. And it was very important for me because I think that when I worked on it, there was some feminist discourse floating around in Mexico that sometimes presented women as incapable of doing harm, or justified in doing harm, or as victims whose position relating to power is immutable. And I think I was falling for it for a bit. But making this record at the same time I was going through different internal and societal processes really changed course for me. Our positions relating to power do change, depending on many different factors, and it’s quite dangerous to think they don’t. So in exploring these ugly parts of myself, the ones that are capable of doing harm, I got to think about it from a larger view and offer empathy and understanding for myself and others.
And, as always, to close… What are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
I don’t know if it’s my absolute favorite, but it’s the one that comes to mind. I’ve been living in Berlin, which is a very quiet city, and one day I found myself closing my eyes and trying to remember the sound of the chaos of downtown Mexico City. All these voices, people selling things, music, craziness. Just pure chaos. But it definitely has a unique sonic identity. It’s also really, really loud and annoying, but I like going there and getting lost in it. Sometimes when I’m there, I just wander and try to listen to the sound mass. I remember one friend who told me that maybe all the layers in my music are influenced by that; I think he might be right.
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
