When Ela Minus dials in for our video interview, an effulgent mass of light is pouring into her New York window, dousing her house plants and alighting the abstract art hanging on the walls. A fitting setting considering the title of her new album is DÍA, which translates to “day” in her native Spanish.

But Ela finds a more profound definition in the word: “A period of time defined by the presence of light.” She then takes that definition one layer deeper. Light is the means of revealing truth, and in making this record, so many personal truths were revealed to her.

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On her previous records, she experimented with her arsenal of hardware synths including the Akai MPC 1000 and a Moog Sirin. After leaving her hometown of Bogotá, she studied synthesis at Berklee College of Music then started working at Critter & Guitarri, the boutique Brooklyn instrument company, where she built their Pocket Piano. Throughout her work, she has also developed such a good relationship with Moog that when she’s producing on the road they will ship a Sub 37 out to her so she can maintain her signature sound.

But this time around, she shifted her focus away from the hardware and towards herself:

“For this record, I didn’t have any idea or any preconceived concept of what I wanted to make,” Ela says. “I just needed to make a record and get this music out of my system. But I was confused about what it was because it felt like every song was very different. Whenever I would try to put them in a sequence, it felt schizophrenic, but I started realising what tied it together was this presence of light. Making this record was like turning a light on inside of myself, going into every nook and crevice and making music with it.”

While Ela was in the throes of her internal search, she realised the same theme had influenced her music for many years. In remembering her earliest EPs such as Adapt. (2017) and OK…(2018), she would write the word “light” (in Spanish) on Post-it notes and stick them in her immediate view as she worked. But DÍA was the first release where she shined the light to its complete potential, and much of that illumination came in the process of producing the album on the road.

Ela produced her previous works, including her debut album, acts of rebellion (2020), in her home studio, surrounded by her wide range of familiar hardware (she “barely touched” her laptop when she made the first record).

For this album, however, Ela wrote another message to herself: “Change the process, you change the result.”

She went from a small space in the mountains of Northern Mexico to California’s Mojave Desert, to a studio in Los Angeles, back to New York, over to Seattle, down to Mexico City, and finally finishing the album in London. Unlike at home, when her laptop was an afterthought, she now had to use her limited time in all these new spaces to the fullest, recording as much as possible and then doing extensive edits on her laptop after the sessions.

The only familiar machines she had were her trusty Elektron Analog Rytm, OTO BOUM effects unit, Moog Minitaur bass, and sometimes the Sub 37. Other than that, every studio throughout this disparate process was a new, frightening experience.

“I was terrified of not having my own space and not having my own gear. I didn’t believe I would be able to produce out of my own context. So, I’m very proud that I did it that way,” Ela says. While the constant travel took a toll on her body, she found significant value in leaving the comfort of her studio. “There’s something really unique about changing places. The perspective is way bigger. You’re able to see what you’re making better because you’re not tunnel-visioned in. I think that’s extremely positive, and that helped me a lot.”

Creating in new studios illuminated new areas of her music — specifically, her vocals. In Ela’s earlier songs, such as Dominique and Megapunk, her voice is subdued, adding another simmering layer to the dark analogue soundscape. On cuts from DÍA such as COMBAT, she sings without restraint, providing buoyant, graceful tones over a warm ambient composition.

In these new studios, she saw that her subdued style stemmed, in part, from being shy about her neighbours hearing her. In a professional setting, no neighbours were listening in, and by using high-end monitors instead of her Sennheiser HD 25 headphones (as she did at home), she could properly observe how much her productions had increased in quality.

“The vocals just didn’t match the music, and I felt like the production was getting so much more confident. The voice was just not there, and it was kind of hurting my music,” Ela says. Another benefit of being in these professional environments was the wide variety of microphones she could try. “The first thing every engineer or producer will tell you is, ‘You need to try every single microphone as a singer until you find the one that fits perfectly for your voice.’”

For Ela, two mics fit her voice: The Neumann U 87 and a Telefunken U48, running both through a Distressor and a Neve 1073 preamp. With this tried-and-tested formula, she discovered her true vocal power, which, like a domino effect of revelation, revealed that she also needed to give more attention to her lyrics.

For instance, in the song BROKEN, despite its uplifting arpeggios and dance-pop beat, Ela is singing about how she was, in fact, broken. That realisation only came to light while she was writing the song.

“I never thought I would write that song until I wrote it. The chorus flowed out of me with the lyrics, and I remember sitting there in awe of what I had just written. The fact that I was maybe not doing so well at the moment was illuminated to me,” Ela says.

Coming out of the pandemic, Ela launched right into touring acts of rebellion, stepping out on stage to see crowds filled with intoxicated people — completely disconnected from themselves, each other, and the music. “I remember looking out at the crowd and seeing their eyes. No one was there. It was very, very sad,” Ela says. But she was also disconnected from herself and what she truly wanted from her life:

“On a professional level, I still don’t really care about any career goals. I never wanted to be signed to a label. I never wanted to play big festivals. I never had this hyper-specific dream that a lot of my colleagues have,” Ela says.

“In the years before the pandemic, I kind of let myself get pulled into this world. It never really felt right, but I still went out and tried. Then everything was set up for 2020, and it vanished into thin air. So, that left me not only broken or sad because of the obvious reasons, but also confused because I tried to follow a path that didn’t really feel like my path.”

As Ela is releasing and performing DÍA, though, she feels like she is back on the right path. She made big changes to the people around her, and she is stepping forward with intention:

“I don’t have the answers to everything I want to do differently. But the things that I know in my gut have to change, I’ve changed. The things that I am unsure about changing, I’m doing with a lot of attention and a lot of intention,” Ela says.

One thing that will never change about Ela is her Colombian heritage — making DÍA reignited her connection to her home country. Despite writing English lyrics and making music outside traditional Colombian genres like cumbia and vallenato, as a member of what she describes as “a new generation of Latin Americans,” she expresses her relationship with her native land differently.

“We grew up in cities not listening to Colombian music. Completely colonised culturally by the North. Watching only European or North American movies, the same for music, the same for books. Everything we consumed, not only us, but even our parents, has been from the north. So the ways we connect to our Colombian-ness are deeper and less obvious.”

Ela expresses her Colombianness through her creative application of rhythm. Many Latin genres, no matter how complex they may sound, are built on a simple foundational rhythm known as a clave. Her relationship with Colombian music plays a similarly deep yet impactful influence on her original works. “We don’t need literal Colombian or Latin rhythms. It doesn’t have to be a Reggaeton beat. Rhythm is in everything.”

This broad, fervent perspective can be heard in her newfound approach to vocals and lyrics. In listening to her sing on I WANT TO BE BETTER, she focuses on how the words fit together as different beats, defining phrases with accented consonants and discarding standard rhyme schemes:

“When I met you, I collapsed, disarmed/Still trying to pick myself up/And every piece of me/Just wants to show you that,” Ela sings.

As ostensibly separate from the Colombian tradition as her music may seem, at her album release show in Bogotá, her people resonated with her more than ever.

“Being in my hometown, seeing everybody connecting and dancing and singing, it was extremely special. I’ve never felt more love in a room than that night,” Ela says, attributing that passionate response to making the album from such an honest place. “All of these deeper traits of my personality are very present In DÍA, and I think that’s why it’s connecting to people.”

Ela Minus revealed those deeper traits to her fans — and to herself — by having the courage to explore new techniques and also explore her inner world…by the light of day. Or rather, “la luz del día.”

Ela Minus’ DÍA is out now via Domino.

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