Casta - Lázaro (2021)

One of the many territories colonized by the pandemic was the dreamworld. Early mornings started to become routine mixed with anxiety. It was in these spaces of no sleep nor sunlight when Casta would go out the balcony to wait for the day to come. It was through these blurry nights and early mornings that a new horizon started to form, liberating the city of its daily hassle. Where before there was noise of trucks and construction, a new silence was born. From that balcony, he started to hear something different and foreign at the same time: the birds singing. As the days went by, that song spread through the trees of the gated communities in a beautiful dance, setting the treetops on fire in an unusual uproar. Guatemala City was a forest again.

The life of birds, the small waves of Lake Atitlan, and the wind from the slopes of the Toliman volcano all blend: nature is the watermark for this album. This work reflects that brief and delicate resurrection from Mother Nature in 2020 with Casta’s bold return to his own rhythmic and melodic realm that led him to create music in the first place. It is not by chance that an artist like Casta admires Joaquin Orellana´s work, a legend who harnesses what the Guatemalan environment provides to build his magnificent and unique sounds from his handmade instruments. You can also feel Orellana’s legacy as Casta experiments with patterns and melodies, breaking beats at different tempos and setting a personal timbre on each track.

"Lazaro" is perhaps the flagship of this journey. This first track unites the various elements present in the rest of this LP: the intimate relationship between nature, changing rhythms, and delicate harmonies and chaotic depth. The album seems to have two sides, two faces, with life and death dividing the middle. It is here that you can find one of Lazaro´s biggest achievements, the diversity of emotions that Casta invites us to feel. When we go out the other side, we come out with a subtle sense of weightlessness and fullness at the same time. By doing so, we understand that in these musical worlds created by Casta we can inhabit both nostalgia and hope for the future.