JULIO LOPEZ
CLOUD UNKNOWING

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Julio Lopez presents their cartological mapping of lineage, diaspora, appropriation, spirit and song in their illuminating debut album, Cloud Unknowing.  Released quietly on bandcamp in the early parts of 2025, we are honored to give the album its due recognition a year and change later.  Julio excavates, uncovers, and retraces centuries old songs, asking how one can "hold a feeling in the sound and then letting go."  The arrangements on Cloud Unknowing put us in close proximity to Julio - the heat of their voice, the rosin hitting the strings of their fiddle, their embodiment of harmonic complexity.  Julio notes this album is their way of addressing "how musical and spiritual knowledge can move disguised within colonial-religious structures of language."  Hidden in each of these songs is Julio's deeply researched and felt practice of exploring the interwovenness of inner transfiguration as acts of resistance against the outer structures that frame one's interiority.  We hear nods to traditional Irish folk songs, cumbia rebajada, boleros, and transmission arts. The breadth of detail is astonishing and worthy of deep, intentional listening.