Ale Hop & Laura Robles

Berlin-based Peruvian artists Alejandra Cárdenas (aka Ale Hop) and Laura Robles used their debut collaborative album 'Agua Dulce' to radically deconstruct Afro-Peruvian music and dance traditions, paying close attention to its colonial history. The duo focus on the cajón, a Peruvian box drum that enslaved peoples made from fruit boxes when Spanish colonizers banned the more familiar foot drum in the 19th Century. Robles uses a home-made electric cajón to beat out rhythms from dances like Landó, Lamento and Zamacueca, while Cárdenas fractures the sounds with abstract electronics, splintering the tracks into noisy markers of past, present and future.