Los Angeles’ pop experimentalist Angélica Garcia announces the release of her debut album, entitled Gemelo (meaning “Twin” in English) for Partisan Records on June 7th. Representing the two selves, the spirit and body, the album tackles how they work together and against one another. Gemelo was produced by Carlos Arévalo (Chicano Batman), and recorded over a month and a half in Virginia, with an inspired convergence of vanguard electronic pop explorations mirroring the depth of its spiritual excavations. Using a fresh pop auteur perspective, Angélica created music that is searing and borderless, free of cultural confinement and challenging the notion that American music requires singing in English.

The news of Gemelo arrives with lead single “Color De Dolor” – the first song she wrote for this lbum – which explores the acknowledgement of grief in kaleidoscopic pop clarity and is a testament to Angélica’s philosophy of life. The song, translating to “the color of pain,” is an anthem for processing how pain and beauty, rage and peace, sadness and joy all form the colors with which we render and process existence. 

With the announcement also comes the “Color De Dolor” music video directed by Barcelona-born filmmaker Sergi Castellà, featuring Angélica and shot in Simi Valley, CA. Watch it here:

Grief is nuanced, and sometimes pain can be intertwined with beauty, “ says Angélica. “Gemelo is a body of work that explores the process of grieving – acknowledging the light and shadow within it. Color De Dolor was the first song that was written for Gemelo. It’s also the first song on the record where I face grief for what it is. I wanted Color De Dolor to feel very textured and lush, like you’re walking through a jungle. To me, its kaleidoscopic quality shows sadness and beauty.” 

Gemelo is crucial for Angélica, marking not only her first album sung almost entirely in Spanish, but her first deeply probing the ancestral altar, having in recent years devoted herself to a process of monumental deconstruction — of religion, spirit, heritage, and womanhood, in turn confronting grief and finding liberation. “It was like getting dropped into ice water,” she says.

As her most focused work to date, Gemelo progresses from its delicate, tender entry in Side A, which serves like almost a meditation, to the visceral intensity of Side B, which immerses into the difficult, at times terrifying work of healing.  All throughout the album she also challenges the traditional American pop music idioms, opening the floodgates with a refreshingly universal rhythmic set of songs where heritage snaps into focus in both lyric and disparate sound channeling elements of Yves Tumor, Kate Bush, Karen O, Rosalía, Kali Uchis and Xenia Rubinos. She and Arévalo have shaped a self-contained universe with her demos, bonding over everything from Portishead and Radiohead to Timbaland and early Madonna, incorporating front-and-center pop-vocal production and clublike textures and rhythms all throughout. 

Pre-save Gemelo now:

Stay tuned for more to come from Angélica Garcia this Spring.