Artefactos de Dolor

How does your pain define you? A foreigner in a foreign land. Unrequited love. Broken homes. Domestic violence. Terminal illness. Death. Distance. Personal injury. Financial ruin. Absence. How does your pain define you? La Niña is the debut album from Artefactos de Dolor. Recounting collective past and present struggles, La Niña is a cathartic exercise to confront the pain that exists in all of us; the scars that form our faces, bodies, and souls. Each song exposes a facet of pain that manifests inside the outsider; the local; the nomad; the hermit; the dreamer; the thinker; the scorned; the lover. A.D.D. was formed in 2017 by Mexican artist Alyssa Cecilia Barrera Auvinen, and NYC [by way of Ohio] vets Todd Sines [Interval, .xtrak] and Charles Noel [Interval, Archetyp]. Raised in the contentious Mexican/US border town of Nuevo Laredo, MX and Laredo, TX. Alyssa is the daughter of a father from a criadore de gallos familia, with a long tradition of champion cock-fighters. Alyssa’s debut release as LDY OSC was first launched in 2017 with a single and an EP on The Bunker New York, with two forthcoming releases on Squirrels on Film and Kontra-Musik. She currently resides in Vienna with her husband Johannes Auvinen (TIN MAN), where she works on music production and vintage synthesizer repairs. Alyssa leads the trio’s plunge into uncharted cenotes on the second release on HELIC.AL. Since their inception, they have headlined the stages of Synthposium in Moscow, Russia, in addition to select dates in NYC, Tokyo, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit, MI. Wading through dozens of experiments Sines made whilst beta testing modular synths, the trio honed in on 11 selections to form the basis of La Niña. Conjuring Wixáritari ceremonies, Alyssa screeches, chants, shrills and squawks like an omni-directional exorcism in forward and reverse, replete with indigenous Mayan sounds — such as the pajaro tortuga “Turtle bird” wind instrument found on Ritmo Primal. With Sines on clarinet, bass, guitar, and programming; and Noel on percussion, bass, whispers, and synths; the trio volley their rhythmic, melodic and textural energies to create new spaces for Alyssa’s vocals to suggest, command, and seduce as the fulcrum in between.