Founded in 1998 by the artist Colin Andrew Sheffield, for nearly two and half decades the Austin based imprint, Elevator Bath, has carefully sculpted a discrete context of wonderful outliers within the field of experimental music, producing releases by Michèle Bokanowski, Colin Andrew Sheffield, Keith Berry, Andrew Deutsch & Tony Conrad, and numerous others, that veer toward the highly abstract and elegantly atmospheric. The label’s latest leaves the United States behind, diving south of the border with “The Earth Has Memory”, the debut LP by the Mexico based composer and multidisciplinary artist Concepción Huerta, with two of its pieces co-produced by Olivia Block. Collectively amounting to a brooding work of abstract narrative, blurring the boundaries between drone, electroacoustic and ambient music, and modern composition, “The Earth Has Memory” marks the full emergence of Concepción Huerta as a singular voice in the context of experimental music, and is issued in two very special pressings, a clear vinyl edition of 100 copies and a black vinyl edition of 200 copies, both including a full-color photo insert and housed in a full-color, reverse board jacket with spot gloss printing and poly-lined inner sleeve. An inward journey of rich, sonorous densities by one of Mexico’s most talented artists that’s not to be missed.

Concepción Huerta first appeared within Mexico City’s rich scene of experimental music sometime toward the end of the 2010’s, operating both as a documentarian and musician / composer, as well as maintaining a practice in visual media and sound design. With the exception of a cassette issued in 2020 by Umor Rex, the majority of her recorded output to date has been collaborative, working with artists like Eve Matin, José Orozco Mora, Milena Pafundi, Camilo Ángeles, and most notably Mabe Fratti, with whom she released the widely celebrated 12", “Estatica”, for SA Recordings in 2021.

Huerta’s sound practice is largely rooted in explorations of the everyday, realised through manipulated and processed tape recordings of various objects and instruments, that render ambient atmospheres from the densities of noise. “The Earth Has Memory”, the artist’s debut, solo vinyl LP, pushes this conceptual framework to further extremes. Recorded while Huerta was in residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm, Sweden, and then partially produced / completed at a seminar at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with Olivia Block (Block is credited with co-production on two of its pieces), the album was primarily created on Buchla and Nord synthesisers, the sounds of which were then processed via magnetic tape, lending a tactile, organic quality to the work, which resonates with its narrative of a descent to the center of the earth, further illuminated in counterpoint by the photography by Magaly Ugarte, which graces the cover, taken when she travelled to an obsidian mine in Hidalgo with Huerta.

Beginning with a low-frequency long-tone piece, “Emerges from the Deep”, which calls to mind the doom explorations of Sunn O))), Huerta rapidly progresses toward more expanded realms, from the shimmering ambient expanses of “The Crack is Illuminated” - flirting with ecstatic highs of minimal new age before becoming consumed by tense, bristling textures and atonalities in the piece’s second half - to the dark drones of “Trepidation”, and a series of reverb drenched constructions that call to mind the territories explored during the 1990s and early 2000s by artists like Rafael Toral, Oren Ambarchi, and Christian Fennesz, infused with a more palpable sense of mood, tension, and narrative arc, and a fascinating sense of acoustic warmth and tactility that leads the ear to believe that the sounds sources are acoustic rather than electronic and synthesised.

A brilliant statement by Concepción Huerta, further centring the rich experimental scenes currently emerging from Mexico and Latin America at large in our minds, “The Earth Has Memory" is one of those records that sticks itself to the turntable and keeps revealing new dimensions and depths with every spin. Issued by the always fantastic Elevator Bath in two very special pressings, a clear vinyl edition of 100 copies and a black vinyl edition of 200 copies, both including a full-color photo insert and housed in a full-color, reverse board jacket with spot gloss printing and poly-lined inner sleeve. Grab it quick. Once the word gets out, this one is going to fly.