Tesoros, the new album from Argentine composer Lumtz, began life as something else. Las cosas que llevo en mi mochila (“things carried in a backpack”) grew and shifted, as the stream near Bariloche where parts of the album were made does through the seasons. Reflecting on this, Lumtz crafts a journal of small, vulnerable moments through quiet field recordings, soft melodies, and repeating harmonic gestures. Everything here is careful, as though he wants listeners to feel safe and embedded in this world. Tesoros is a gentle wonder.
Tesoros is OUT NOW on We All Speak In Poems. Lumtz can be found HERE.
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What are your earliest memories of sound and music? Were there particular moments or recordings that first pulled you in?
I remember the sound of the old bridge that connects Viedma and Patagones, where I was born and spent part of my childhood—the resonance of its metal plates and rails. I also remember falling asleep in the back seat of my father’s car and, hearing the rhythmic pattern of the cobblestones beneath the tires, knowing exactly where we were.
When I think of music, I picture a ceramic wind chime that hung by my mother’s window and a song by Fito Páez that she used to play on Saturday mornings while cleaning the house.
Bariloche seems like this very specific place. It’s mountainous; there’s the lakeside. It seems visually intense and just kind of incredible. How has growing up and living there shaped how you hear and document the world around you?
I was born and began growing up in Viedma, the capital of Río Negro, not far from Bariloche. I spent my childhood playing by the river, and only now do I realize how many of my earliest sonic memories are tied to it and to the natural world around it.
I first visited Bariloche when I was twenty-five and fell completely in love with the place. I was traveling with my band—about ten of us packed into a van. When we stopped on the road into the city and I stepped outside, I felt the cold air on my face and filling my lungs. In that moment, I knew I wanted to live with that feeling every day of my life. It took time and effort to build a life here, but we made it.
How did field recording become part of your practice? Was there a moment where recording the world outside felt as important as making music in your studio?
I think it stems, in part, from the desire to capture in sound the feeling I described earlier. I know very little music theory; in fact, I am only now beginning to study it and to write notes on a staff for the first time. That limitation led me to seek the sensory and emotional through sound rather than through harmony.
For example, I understand that the third determines whether a chord is major or minor, but I still do not fully know which notes convey tension or hope. So, if I want a piece to feel more hopeful, I will add bright sounds or sounds that move and bring a sense of freshness. If I want tension, I might record a creak or a low thud, or EQ the sound of the wind to remove its softness and leave only its weight. All of this is usually very intuitive, and it often takes me to fascinating and unexpected places. Sometimes I know exactly where I am headed, but just as often what I know is simply that I want to venture out and discover where the music will lead me.
Tesoros was built from material gathered between 2023 and 2025, and it’s described as a diary of care and containment. Can you talk about what was happening in your life during that time? Not the specific details, but the feeling of it, what you were going through?
Yes. Those three years were deeply transformative for me—personally, professionally, and in terms of where and how I was living. There were many changes in a short period of time, along with many attempts and frustrations. In the midst of that upheaval, I would collect sounds with my recorder: ambiences, textures, melodies, the sonic character of homes and everyday objects—things I wanted to preserve and not forget.
In the few moments of calm I had, I would sit down and begin to arrange that material. Revisiting the folder from time to time helped me understand what I was living through and where I was headed. Listening also allowed me to reconcile myself with certain experiences; sometimes they did not sound as I remembered them, and at other times they sounded exactly as I felt. I learned a great deal about being present, and at the same time about imbuing a recording with intention as I shaped it into music and returned to the archive again and again.
Without realizing it, the collection gradually became Tesoros. That is why I call it a diary of care and safekeeping: whenever I felt a little lost, I would return to that folder.
The album started as Las cosas que llevo en mi mochila and became Tesoros. That shift from “things I carry” to “treasures” feels like a real change in how you felt about the material. When did that happen, and what brought it about?
For me, the two titles ultimately mean the same thing. However, The Things I Carry in My Backpack has a more nostalgic quality, and I did not want to evoke that feeling. Tesoros suggests discovery, but also homage, and there is something hopeful about it. That title gives me a sense of hope.
You describe listening as a form of spiritual exchange with the spaces you inhabit. Can you say more about that? What does exchange mean here?
When I arrive at a place—whether it is a forest, a beach, a mountain, or simply a street corner in my neighborhood—the soundscape changes because of my presence as a human being. It can take five, ten, or even twenty minutes for the other forms of life there to resume their activity, if they feel at ease with me being there. Some may choose to leave or remain silent. That is where I feel the spiritual exchange takes place: in the care I bring to the encounter and in the way the place receives me.
I usually wait before I begin recording. I let my breathing slow down, allow myself to adjust to the temperature and atmosphere of the place, and simply listen. Sometimes recording is not possible, and that is perfectly fine. There are also times when I return home, listen back, and realize that the recording did not work out. I accept that, too, as part of the exchange: it simply was not meant to happen that day.
A friend once asked me, “Do you go to record the stream every day?” It made me realize that I often returned there not to capture anything, but simply to put on my headphones and, by adjusting the input gain, see if I could hear a little farther. I could spend hours doing that. Recording inevitably involves a degree of appropriation, as if I were taking something away from a place, and that does not sit comfortably with me. So I try to be as respectful as possible and to care for every environment I enter.
I would never clip a sensor onto a plant to “listen to its flows,” translate its vibrations into MIDI notes, or attach a contact microphone to a mushroom, practices that have become quite fashionable recently. I prefer to leave such beings in peace and listen from the outside. What happens within them belongs to them. I feel that human beings often want to penetrate and possess everything, and I do not share that impulse. There is an ancestral ethic of care that informs the way I listen and, later, the way I work with those sounds.
Tesoros is 16 tracks built from subtle textures, silence, and delicate gestures. With that much material gathered over two years, how did you find the shape of the album? How did you know what belonged and what wasn’t really part of it?
The folder gradually gave rise to seventeen pieces. At first I assumed that, at most, ten of them would make the final album—and even that felt like a lot to me. When I shared the sketches with Brady, the director of We All Speak in Poems, he told me he would not remove a single track and immediately suggested releasing it as a double LP. I loved the idea, and it helped me embrace a few pieces I had been uncertain about.
In the end, I removed only one track, which I felt repeated an intention already present elsewhere and did not add anything essential to the narrative. The album feels complete with these sixteen pieces. I wanted there to be room for many of the things I love: rhythmic passages, moments of rest, experiments, and different kinds of musicality. In truth, the record needed this duration in order to unfold fully; otherwise it would have been shorter and perhaps more densely packed. I like it the way it is.
The music doesn’t dramatize the difficult feelings of that period, but gives them space to breathe. How did you find that distance? Was restraint something you had to work toward, or does it come naturally to how you make things?
I am a rather reflective and solitary person, so with some of the more nostalgic pieces I found that I needed to shorten them or lighten them in some way, both to keep from being drawn too deeply into those emotions myself and to be able to live alongside them. The opposite is true as well: sometimes a piece turns out too strident or too bright, and I soften it with a small gesture—perhaps a chord, an ambient sound, or a texture. Without consciously aiming for it, a kind of natural balance emerges.
The backpack is both literal and metaphorical here. You carry one on walks, and it also holds memories and accumulated experience. Do you think of Tesoros as something you’ve set down, or something you’re still carrying?
A treasure is something that shines—something that, when you find it again, has the power to save you. I think the backpack is becoming just that: a place of refuge, a companion that I continue to carry with me.
What does your workspace look like for this kind of music? I’m curious about the physical environment where something this intimate gets made.
I live in Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina. My home is a small cabin about two hundred meters from the Casa de Piedra stream, at kilometer 13 on the western side of the city.
I like to work in the morning, with natural light coming through the windows and the trees in the yard in view. Everything inside is made of wood, and I have many plants that have been given to me over the years. There are a few books, wool socks for walking around the house, and plenty of notes pinned to the walls to remind me not only of the things I need to do, but also of the things I dream of. I keep separate notebooks for different projects, cassette recorders, and instruments tucked away in bags and drawers. On my desk are speaker and monitor stands that I built myself from reclaimed wood.
At this very moment, there is a candle burning on top of the right speaker and a few eucalyptus leaves smoldering nearby, which a friend sent me in the mail.
“Libretas” draws from your notebooks, separate ones for drawing, therapy, and album ideas, and then you use a synthesizer to mimic the sound of parrots outside a window. That’s such a compelling combination of ideas and sounds. How do everyday objects and habits find their way into the music? Is it a conscious choice or does it happen naturally?
I recorded those parrots at the window of my previous home, which was on the hillside at kilometer 6. In front of my computer there was a window that I kept open most of the time, and that afternoon the sky seemed to be preparing for a storm. Perhaps that is why there were so many parrots flying in flocks and making such sudden movements. When I listened back to the recording, I was captivated by the sensation created by their back-and-forth motion in the stereo field, and I wanted to explore how that same gesture might sound in a musical context. That is usually how these kinds of connections arise in my work—quite naturally, through play and attentive listening.
I really love how “Un puñado de ramas” nods to the details you photograph on hikes: twigs, textures, small, overlooked things, etc. Your practice seems very attentive to what most people walk past or just don’t see. How do you stay open to those small, ordinary moments?
Thank you 🙂 I try to remain as calm and receptive as possible, but I am also very attentive and easily moved, so there is almost always something that touches me. That is why I nearly always carry a camera and a recorder with me—just in case. I live in an extraordinary place, which perhaps makes these encounters more likely, but I have experienced them in cities as well, where a particular light or shape suddenly catches my attention. I enjoy experimenting, taking photographs, and seeing what emerges. That sense of curiosity keeps me creative.
I also walk a great deal, and walking makes me more available for something unexpected to happen.
What surprised you about making Tesoros?
What surprised me most was opening that folder of “loose things” and realizing that it already contained seventeen pieces that were well on their way to becoming an album. It felt as though the record had suddenly revealed itself. I appreciated that process because it spared me the stress that often comes with starting a project without a clear direction, and the frustrations that can arise from trying to force a preconceived outcome.
That lightness—the freedom of creating without deadlines or a fixed destination beyond the act of making itself—was, I believe, essential to the sound, character, and eventual shape of the album.
And lastly, to close as always… What are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
My favorite sound is the rustling of tree leaves when the branches sway vigorously in the wind and brush against one another.
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.
